Chooch has decided that the theme of his upcoming birthday party is Star Wars, which I suppose is an improvement from “carrots,” because I was having a hard time finding carrot-y decorations.  I have less than two weeks to think of non-gory, G-rated ways to entertain a bunch of fucking preschoolers. However, this is not my area of expertise*; my knowledge of Star Wars is very base at best, so suggestions are welcome.

(*Really, if it’s not inside the covers of Alternative Press, a sport played on ice with a puck, anything horror-related, or a show called Degrassi, I’m definitely not your girl. Go ask Google. I know very little about the world around me.

)

Things would be so much easier if he had just let me plan Zombie Party 2.0 like I wanted, but this is one of the few times I was able to step away from my inflated ego and admit that it’s not always about me, motherfuckers.

(Though it should be.)

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I’m taking the day off. (Because I do SO MUCH on here, you know.) So here is an oldie about littering and cops, and cops who litter.

---

Another Reason to Hate the 5-0

May 2007

It was the middle of a lazy Saturday afternoon in Hamilton, Ohio. Christina and I were lounging around her room and I was making her cry by talking about how I hate God. I suppose I should have been penciling in a time for church in my day planner since “He” evidently spared our lives the night before when we got caught in the midst of a hail storm on our way from Pittsburgh to Ohio. It was probably the single most terrifying moment of my life and it took place right after I had been talking about Hell.

Over top of Christina’s mighty exaltation for her love of all things Christ, I heard the squelch of a siren from behind her house. We ran over to the window and discovered that there were two police officers on the street behind her house and they had pulled over a man in a truck. It seemed like it was just a traffic violation and I was quickly becoming bored. Luckily, I hung around long enough to witness the most appalling act of crime I have ever seen with these green eyes.

The officers were beginning to wrap things up and as the one cop made to get into the passenger side of the patrol car, he poured out the remainders of a can of what appeared to be Pepsi and then deliberately tossed the empty can into Christina’s back yard.

“Oh no he didn’t!” I exclaimed to Christina, right before shaping a makeshift megaphone with my hands and shouting “LITTERER!” and then ducking, leaving Christina framed alone in the window looking like the sole perpetrator.

Stomping over to her bed, I grabbed my shoes and sat down hard.

“What are you doing?” Christina asked nervously.

“I’m going out there.” I walked out of the bedroom and bounded down the steps, leaving her pleas in a cloud of my dust. She caught up with me before I made it to the back door and grabbed my arms.

“Look, I really don’t think going out there is a good idea. The cops around here are dicks.” She had thrown herself between me and the door so I knew she meant business. I walked dejectedly back into her kitchen as she explained to me that her neighborhood is kind of bad and that the cops are always looking for a reason to, well, be cops and that she really didn’t want to have to make that call to Henry.

“Henry!” I exclaimed in remembrance of my boy-toy in Pittsburgh. “Let’s call him for legal counsel.” And of course he wasn’t home. I left a message and that dickshitter never called back because he figured it was “something stupid” I was calling about, as I would later learn.

The cops had left by then, leaving me alone with a heightened sense of extreme community failure. I didn’t want it be over yet so I continued pacing and spouting vulgarities until I finagled Christina into calling the police station. “We have their patrol car number! Do it, Christina, for all of us civilians. And the environment. It’s God’s will.” I knew that would clinch it.

Christina finally relented, only because she didn’t want me making the call because supposedly I’m too “hot-headed.” But I would have used words like ‘reprehensible’ and ‘detestable’ to convey to the sergeant how appalled I truly was. And I would have thrown in the words ‘law’ and ‘suit’ somewhere in between mention of dying babies and that our earth is God’s playground (HAHA).

But Christina still wouldn’t hand over the phone; she was eventually dispatched through to Sgt. Ebbing (a man I will never forget, bless his heart). Explaining the complaint, she actually said, “Sir, I know this may seem trivial.”

Excuse me, trivial? Are you kidding? That prick littered in her back yard. He did something that people like us would get fined for. Oh, I was livid. She was being too nice and congenial during the phone call and my body was burning. I started to envision what would have happened if I had managed to get out of her house while the cops were still there. They don’t scare me. Plus, I have big boobs.

This was when I decided that I really, truly, and legitimately hated that littering officer. My ears were roaring with the sound of large, wavering sheets of metal and my heart was pounding like I had just run ten yards after ingesting fourteen fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches and an eight ball. I imagined scratching his face (out of malice, not passion) and striking his nose with the heel of my palm in an upward motion, just like Mr. Miyagi taught me. Then I would retrieve his discarded aluminum can and crush it against his jock.

Oh heaven, I have finally reached you through my fantasies.

Christina ended the call and jolted me out of my daydream. She explained to me that Sgt. Ebbing was going to call her back once he reprimanded the officers and that he also informed her that she could go to the courthouse and file for a citation, to which she said would not be necessary (I would have done it – fuck the police). I felt a tiny bit reassured and calmer but Christina was a little leery that Sgt. Ebbing had asked for her full name and address. “I’m a pot head! What if they’re going to be watching me now?”

“What do I care? I live in Pittsburgh.” And then I laughed. And if you know me, you know that laugh, and are probably wanting to bitch-slap me just at the mere thought of it.

In the meantime, we called Henry to fill him in. “You didn’t go out there, did you?” was the first utterance from his fat mouth. I began to feel a complex developing and asked, “No, I didn’t go out there but would it really have been so bad if I had?”

“Uh, yeah!” he answered. “With your temper? I don’t need to be bailing you out of jail.” I have to say I’m a little insulted that I’m not trusted to handle situations such as this one on my own. But Christina was happy because Henry shared in her apprehension.

Sgt. Ebbing called back about two hours later (presumably because he was banging broads in the drunk tank), at which time Christina’s sister Cynthia answered the phone and yelled to Christina, “I don’t fucking know who it is!” The sergeant (I don’t trust him, by the way; I think he’s a cocksucker to be honest with you) relayed the disciplinary action that was sanctioned, and might I add it only entailed asking the officers if it was true and then telling them to come back and pick up the can.

But he lied to us and I know it. Sgt. Ebbing, you’re a lying cocksucker. He told Christina that the officer admitted to tossing the can, which was purportedly an “illegal can of beer” which was confiscated from the man who had been pulled over. In the midst of the confusion while they were making an arrest, it must have slipped the officer’s mind that he had littered.

Except that I didn’t see them make an arrest. I saw the man get back in his truck and leave. What did they say, “Just meet us at the station”? Oh, I don’t think so.

In other words, the sergeant wanted us to think that it was admirable of the officer to be honest about the littering, but at the same time he tried to make us feel guilty or ashamed that these men were in the throes of serving justice and that they should be excused of such a trivial act.

“I’m going out there to wait for them to come pick up the can,” I announced as I ran for the door. Christina came with me and we discovered that the can was no longer there. That asshole sergeant waited for them to come pick it up before calling back because he knew that I was about to get all Firestarter on their asses. I just know it!

I don’t feel like justice was served. And I didn’t get to swear at anybody.

I’m going to pay one of her neighbors to let me slice their baby with a Pepsi can and then pretend it happened on the one in the Christina’s backyard. THIS IS FAR FROM OVER.

[Ed.Note: Obviously, it was over. Christina plied me with pie and the day quickly turned into “Sgt. Ebbing who now?”]

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Get fucked.

All the pre-school kids get to bring in treats on their birthday. Since there was no school on Monday, Chooch is bringing shit in tomorrow. I thought perhaps Henry could bake some cupcakes; Chooch suggested cookies.

But Henry went off on his own and decided to make chocolate lollipops. He bought three different sets of molds: pirates, dinosaurs and monkeys. Also procured were bags of white chocolate molding things, food coloring and paint brushes to help aid in a potential murder-suicide situation.

Because solid chocolate is too easy.

Before sitting down to “help,” I considered relisting* myself as “in a relationship with Henry Robbins” on Facebook so that I could re-breakup with him after fifteen minutes, because the two of us working side-by-side on anything involving food and arts and crafts is surely going to end with our home criss-crossed in yellow crime scene tape.

(*Technically, according to Facebook, I’m still single after Henry failed to take me roller skating Saturday night.)

Henry wasn’t even done setting up yet when Chooch spilled a jar of orange food coloring on himself THREE TIMES. This was partly because I was too busy perfecting my Negligent Teen Mom act and partly because no one ever listens when Henry says not to touch something, which would explain why I’ve found myself in so many philandering situations over the years.

So now my child looks like he was sired by Pauly D after a reckless night of beatin’ the beat in Snooki’s kuka with his spray-tanned guido venereal-rod. Have fun selling booty shorts on the boardwalk this summer, son.

Meanwhile, I managed to paint the miniscule crannies of a pirate skull, a pirate ship and two dinosaurs before completely flipping my shit.

“IT WON’T STAY MELTED!” I kept screaming at Henry, who would calmly tell me to “work faster.”

%&*%*^$*^%

Listen here, Wonka. Unless you want to see how fast I work when equipped with a sausage grinder and your dick in my hands, best BACK UP OFF ME.

Fifteen minutes — pretty lofty expectations on my behalf. I only made it ten before rage and a quickly diminishing temper had me demonstrating full-body palsy shakes before launching my paint brush into a death-spiral to Hell and stomping off to pout on the couch.

“I didn’t ask for your help,” Henry murmured, hard at work filling his molds with plain milk chocolate and not even bothering to PAINT THE FUCKERS LIKE HE WAS MAKING ME DO, while I yelled a bunch of vulgarity-drenched death threats to the entire institution of chocolate candy and made promises to insert leftover lollipop sticks into Henry’s asshole while he sleeps tonight.

He’s currently in the kitchen, making exaggerated motions of extreme harriedness while I sit here listening to Emarosa, loudly and with my feet up, because I have no obligations to fulfill. Life is good.

Enjoy yourself, bro. This was all your idea, remember? If it were my choice, I would gladly just jam a stick of Juicy Fruit in each of those little fucker’s mouths and be done with it.

God, I hate doing things.

Nothing says Happy Birthday like half-assed chocolate shit on sticks born from rage, dysfunction and pure, unadulterated hate for life. Eat ’em up, kids.

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“Kick him in the nards! KICK.HIM.IN.THE.NARDS!”

For twenty years, my only self-defense tactic was something I learned from the 1980’s horror-comedy classic Monster Squad. So when I heard about the Zombie Self-Defense Course being offered down the street from me at a place called Zomburgh, I enrolled. I figured it might be good to add to my near-empty repertoire of hurtin’, especially if I did find myself contending with a zombie. Perhaps nard-punting wouldn’t work in that situation. Plus, it would give me a chance to meet Kristy in person, a fellow zombie-lover with whom I had become e-friends, who had also enrolled.

(She has a zombie lounge in her house!

This automatically makes her cooler than most people.)

I arrived at Zomburgh a little before class started at 6. Kristy was already there talking to our instructor Josh, who did not resemble a zombie at all. Norm, Zomburgh’s proprietor, came out and had me sign a release, giving me the option to disallow my photo to be taken. I hate having my photo taken almost as much as I hate driving past water towers, but I decided to be a team player this once. If they try tagging me on Facebook, though, I’m lawyering up.

Josh insisted on waiting for a few more minutes because more people were supposed to come. I felt sorry for him, because I think we all knew no one else was coming.

It reminded me of my past parties, where I pace back and forth by the front window with a cheese plate balanced on one hand, and I say in a sing-song tone, “But they RSVP’d! They’ll be here!” while practical Henry is putting away the paté and blowing out seancé candles.

Eventually accepting the fact that he was (shockingly) only going to have us two students, Josh had us kick off our shoes and stand by the purple and green mats laid out in the middle of the room. Meanwhile, Norm ran off to grab his camera, which I hoped had been struck to death by a baseball bat in his absence.

It only took us about 2 minutes to realize that this was essentially just a class to ward off drunk rapists. (Everyone reading this is now shocked.) But I figured it would behoove me to pay attention since I do live with Henry, after all.

Josh asked for a volunteer. I gave Kristy a look which I hoped she read as, “Don’t make me get mean! This was your idea, go!” even though it probably looked more like, “I’m the most unassertive girl you will ever meet, please observe my quivering bottom lip and take one for the team.”

“OK, pretend to be a zombie and walk toward me,” Josh commanded as soon as Kristy stepped on the mat, tossing me a withering glance.

Wait. We had to be the zombies? There was ACTING involved in this shit? Don’t be fooled by all the times people have gone on record saying, “Erin Kelly? Yeah, I know her. She’s a fucking drama queen.” This does not mean I can act. My drama is legit, from the heart — NOT AN ACT! I watched Kristy stagger toward Josh in the patented gait of the undead and tried really hard to pay attention what Josh was saying to us, but all I could think was, “Motherfucker, I’m next. It’s my turn next. I can’t do this I can’t do this I can’t do this. Oh my god, I’m sweating. Maybe I should just plead pregnancy.” (With my gut, that would probably work.)

Meanwhile, Kristy had encroached on Josh’s personal space, at which point he grabbed one of her arms and held it across and against her.

“It’s physically impossible to bite over your own shoulder,” he said, while Kristy chomped at the air. Not something I have ever spent long leisurely afternoons down by the creek trying to accomplish, but now that Josh says I can’t do it, I have a vested interest in defying him.

When it was my turn to play zombie, I was hyper-aware of Norm in the corner, snapping away. I was torn between being the best zombie I could be or hiding my double chin. I tried to make my zombie fall somewhere in the middle of traditional sluggish ambler and the fast-moving breed that zombie purists despise, just so I could reach Josh as fast as possible and bury my undead charade. As soon as I was an arms length from him, he grabbed me by my elbow and forced my arm across my chest, where we then proceeded to fall into a bizarre drunken ballroom number. It was completely awkward and uncomfortable as he forced me all around the room while illustrating to Kristy the control he had over me.

Now that we both had a turn spectating, it was our turn to practice on him.

This guy was not a zombie. He had nary a blood capsule in his mouth, no dangling eyeball, but when he approached me with arms outstretched and mouth all contorted like a stroke victim, my first inclination was to run. RUN, MOTHERFUCKER, RUN. And then run some more. Possibly stop for an Italian ice.

But Josh made me stay in place and go through the motions. I learned very quickly that in the event of an attack, I will lose all situational awareness and forget how to breathe.

It didn’t make me feel very safe, being forced around in sloppy circles while struggling to keep this man’s locked arm taut across his body. He kept breaking character to remind me that I was in control of him, that I should be able to walk into Starbucks and order a latte while keeping him at bay.

I didn’t feel like I could lean an inch to my left and grab a Styrofoam cup of water, let alone be jostled while one-handing a cup steaming with substance hotter than Satan’s jizz.

The ankle-sweep segment was next on the agenda, and just as sensational, only this time Josh got to place his hands on our shoulders.

I don’t even like Henry touching my shoulders. I’m very ticklish there and have been known to pee my pants during the more intense shoulder-touching extravanganzae.

However, I thought I handled myself pretty well. There were a few times I laughed out loud and my instincts had me trying to twist away from Josh’s hands and down onto my knees. (Now that I think about it, this is how I’m tricked into blow jobs nine times out ten.) Josh didn’t seem to approve of my laughter. In fact, he didn’t seem to approve of me at all, with the exception of my knuckles, over which he spent a good minute masturbating my ego. (This happened right after I accidentally cracked them when I pushed my fist against his clavicle, which made me squeal orgasmically about how much I love cracking my knuckles. It was a pretty awkward moment for all involved.)

(But I really love cracking my knuckles. REALLY.)

In addition to his disapproval over my filterless knuckle-cracking g-spot sound effects, Josh also expressed disdain over the fact that I was wearing a sweatshirt featuring Yale’s mascot, when I did not in fact go to Yale.

That’s OK, because I hated his insinuations that I’m a Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus fan (I slammed him down good after he started singing “Party in the USA” to me) and the way he made me want to staple-gun myself shut every time he said the word “rape.”

“Maybe there’s a zombie sex-ed class in the future,” Kristy said after the class.

We also learned a move involving a hardback book (I knew that Bible would finally have a purpose). While Josh was demonstrating, he was talking—as usual—about RAPE. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing as I leaned against the wall, mostly because I kept thinking about how badly I wanted to try these out on Henry, crack his head back with some hard-covered liberal literature. But also because the whole class was so ridiculous.

After the two hours were up, the most valuable piece of information I gleaned was: Run faster than the people you’re with. So in the case of a zombie apocalypse, do not come to me for help. I will sacrifice you faster than MTV renewed “Jersey Shore.” I also learned that Pittsburgh is only 35 miles away from the nearest nuclear power plant, so my paranoia and I have spent all week drawing up plans for a fall-out shelter full of Zebra Cakes, wine and posters of Jonny Craig.

By the time I left Zomburgh, I was 50% convinced rape was my destiny, 49.95% anxious about radiation and .05% empowered.

***

As I walked home in the dark past all the bars on Brookline Boulevard, I didn’t know whether I wanted to pop inside one and instigate the drunk rapists, or just run blindly while screaming, “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!” I also almost got hit by a car. Maybe Zomburgh will offer a street-crossing class so I can learn how to not dart across zig-zaggedly with my hands on the side of my head like I’m in ‘Nam.

Of course I wanted to try everything out on Henry as soon as I walked through the door, but he wasn’t grappling right.

“No! You have to put your hands on my shoulders!” I corrected him after he immediately went for my neck. “Josh always put his hands on my shoulders. This is what all zombie-rapists will do, always.” So Henry would place his hands on my shoulders (any good assailant should change hand-positioning if you ask them), which would only serve to bring me to my knees in a fit of tickle-giggles.

And of course I forgot how to do everything.

Except for the hardback book maneuver! Too bad Henry wrenched the book from me before I could get in proper positioning.

“You’re dead,” he said all sing-songedly.

Even still, that class was definitely the most interesting way I’ve ever chosen to meet an online friend for the first time. Totally worth it.

But I’ll just continue kicking ’em in the nards.

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I want to be writing in my blog even though I’m sick. Henry is like, “GO LAY DOWN AND REST!” but I’m too stubborn. Resting is fucking boring, I’m sorry.

I’m so sick that I left work on Friday after an hour, bringing an end to my perfect attendance streak. (Seriously, I’m such a freak that I have not once called off sick since I started working there last April. With the exception of when I took off to go to Warped Tour in July, but I still neurotically gave like, two months notice.) Barb says that my streak was protected by the fact that I came to work in the first place on Friday and didn’t technically call off, but I feel as though I’d be living a lie if I accepted this loophole, and then we’d have to change the name of my blog to Oh 99.9% Honestly, Erin.

And now Chooch, who we thought was on the mend, is sick again, this time with an ear ache. Chooch has never had an ear ache before, not even when he was a baby (miraculously), so he has been sobbing intermittently about it. I’m sure it’s probably very scary, but he’s totally eclipsing my whining and I can’t help but feel that Henry is more concerned with taking care of him than me (even though he’s made four trips to the store in the last 12 hours for me).

We discovered Chooch’s new symptoms yesterday when we stupidly kept our plans in spite of my sickness to meet my sister Amy, her boyfriend Dick and her daughter Brooke at the Pancake Skate n Whirl yesterday afternoon. It’s a rink we’ve never been to, but it’s halfway between us in Pittsburgh and them in Wheeling, so we figured it was worth checking out.

I had grand visions of this rink being adjacent to some outstanding pancake shack, where patrons would be fork-fed fluffy bites of syrup-bloated pancakes by pony-tailed rink girls while some flour-dusted granny cooked up unlimited batches in the kitchen, some with blueberries, some with angel-dusted chocolate chips. (And I do mean the drug, not celestial dandruff.)

Then I learned that the town itself was called Pancake. There were suspiciously zero pancakes to be found.

The snack bar and arcade games were way superior to that of the Neville Roller Drome, so I was feeling optimistic.

But then I saw the rink. The floor was uneven, painted a pale blue, and had a surprise dip in the center that gave me rollercoaster-stomach when I unknowingly skated across it. I think it may have been the first roller rink in all of the world. I’m pretty sure one of the nicks in the floor that I stumbled across was a souvenir from polio leg braces and in one of the darkened corners, I felt the presence of small pox’ed ghosts.

I can feel things like this now since I am a member of a ghost-hunting team. I also suddenly excel at science.

The size of the rink was about half that of the Roller Drome and the wheels on everyone’s skates were so tight that you could basically just walk clunkily around the rink. Chooch didn’t even need his hand held.

Amy’s back wheel completely locked up at one point and some old broad had to come to the rescue with her skate tools. There were even people walking on the rink IN THEIR SHOES. Roller DJ would have been on his big boy mic in a hot second if he had seen that.

On my first lap around, I had the impeccable timing to be right behind Dick as he lost his balance and began windmilling his arms. His left fist hit me square in the face. My surroundings faded away and all I could see was a 4th of July display at Disney World. I was vaguely aware of Dick apologizing profusely and asking me if I was alright. That’s when I realized that my sinuses were clear (temporarily, anyway) so instead of pressing charges, I found myself thanking him. Then I congratulated him for being the first man to ever punch me in the face (surprisingly). Henry was not pleased that those honors went to someone other than him. That’s OK baby, you punch my dead-end future in the crotch on the daily.

I didn’t manage to skate much. I was overheated after the first three laps, had a sick sweat dotting my upper lip that screamed FEVER ALERT, even though the skates prevented me from maneuvering with my patented velocity. We all spent more time sitting on the benches, I think, until after about an hour and a half, Chooch started whining. This isn’t really like Chooch to whine in public. We thought it was because he had been playing air hockey and got his fingers smashed, but then his whining turned into sobbing and after staring at him for a few minutes, like he was a ticking bomb in a plexi-glass box, our parental bulbs lit up and we deduced that, “Hey, maybe Chooch is really sick.”

Chooch tries to tell us he’s dying while Henry unsuccessfully attempts to bring the page-boy back in vogue.

Which, obviously, he is. Because he is a four-year-old, not actually a pet, and is able to communicate his ailments to us. Sometimes it just takes us a good hour to process what he’s telling us before accepting it as truth.

We cut the afternoon short, which sucks because the last time we tried to hang out with them, we were at the Washington County Fair and it began storming. I hope they don’t think we have an aversion to them. Chooch sobbed the whole way home in the car while I openly wept about my sinuses and Henry considered driving the car into a ditch.

Chooch and I spent the rest of the day being miserable while Henry begged us to just take a nap. So I did, and he let me sleep until 9:30 last night, what the fuck, Henry?? So then I was up most of the night, watching Fuse’s Sexiest Video countdown. #1 was a huge disappointment. So was #2. I woke up this morning feeling as though I was smashed in the face with a frying pan, which would explain that “dream” I had of Henry cooking breakfast in the bedroom.

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I realized on Sunday that I miss football season. It kept all the idiots inside on Sundays and let me enjoy life without the promise of asphyxiating on humanity. And apparently, the skating rink is where all the people want to be when suffering football withdrawal, because that fucking rink has been packed tighter than Clay Aiken’s asshole for the last few weeks. In fact, the one week we went, the parking lot alone was so crowded that we promptly left and went bowling instead.

This past Sunday, we decided to grin and bear it. I knew as soon as we walked in that it was going to be bad news; maybe it was the immediate and shrill cacophony of dolphins on a sugar rush which tipped me off to that.

There were kids everywhere, and they were fucking HYPER, like eight orphanages had planned a field trip on the same day and then set off porridge bombs and false hope of adoption. Totally unacceptable. There was almost nowhere to sit, and some kids were sprawled out in the middle of the walkway like they fucking own the joint, which made me tremble with territoriality.

And of course, they all came paired with douchey parents. Before my skates were even laced, I had already made twenty-three enemies, unbeknownst to any of them. No, you are NOT excused, you mom-jeaned tart.

I made it around the prepubescent slalom course six times at best before slowing to a stop next to Henry (who was patiently pulling Chooch along near the wall) and saying, loud enough for all to hear, “I’m done! There are way too many kids here. THEY ARE RUINING IT. KIDS RUIN EVERYTHING. FUCK!” Henry just looked at me patiently, waiting for me to put a cork in my effervescing rant bottle. I expected him to concur, to say something like, “Yeah, fuck these bitch ass kids. Let’s string ’em up in the corn field and let the Lord take over!” But there was no massaging of my neuroses, so I skated off the rink in a huff, staked out an empty spot on the bench to squeeze my fat ass into, and proceeded to vent to all of my imaginary friends on Twitter. I did a lot of angry exhaling too, because I needed everyone around me to know that I was extremely disgusted by their infiltration of my roller rink, which I purchased 49 years ago in a secret sale before I was even born, that is how awesome I am.

At one point, I happened to look up just as Henry and Chooch idled on the rink across from where I sat. Chooch pointed at me and laughed while Henry pantomimed a crying fit.

Fuckers.

In the middle of my stew session, Roller DJ (who actually gave us a super warm welcome since he hadn’t seen us in like three weeks so that in and of itself made me feel like I belonged there more than any of these other motherfuckers) announced in his signature lackadaisical drawl that it was time for Couple Skate. Sometimes, Kim and Chris will chill out off-rink with Chooch so I can chase Henry down and skate-rape him, but they weren’t there this particular afternoon because Kim hasn’t been feeling well. (And let me add that it sucked not having a partner with whom to plow into small children). So, I stayed on the bench and played into the role of downtrodden single hag while Henry and Chooch couple-skated. And of course, this would be the one time Roller DJ actually played a song worth couple skating to.

Paula Abdul’s classic sex jam, “Rush Rush.”

MOTHER FUCK.

So instead of fake-holding Henry’s hand while telling him about all the boys this song made me want to make out with in middle school, I sat unloved and alone on the bench, witnessing a verbally violent domestic quarrel between the human versions of the Gorgs on Fraggle Rock who were seated across from me.

King was very upset and bellowed loudly, “WHY DON’T WE JUST FUCKING LEAVE THEN?” while Queen sat there acting all Appalachian and shouting back at him to shut up and leave then. I tried to piece it together, maybe he caught her in the back alley fucking a chicken leg, and goddammit this is the LAST time she’s gon’ fuck some greasy chicken leg behind HIS back, so good luck finding another man with a gas station attendant job as good as his who can also fill the role of dead beat dad as adequately as he did.

But no, it was because he done got himself the wrong size roller blades.

“YOU AIN’T LEAVIN’ ME HERE ALONE WITH THESE TWO,” Queen hollared back at him while giving the two youngest ragamuffin spawn a neglectful flick of her thick wrist. “WHY DONTCHU JUS’ GET A NEW SIZE?”

I didn’t even try to pretend that I wasn’t watching. How ya’ll gon’ argue while “Rush Rush” is playing, anyway?

In the end, he ended up getting a new pair of roller blades and I can only hope they went home later and fornicated on top of a week-old pizza box while Jeff Foxworthy did some stand up on the tellyvision behind them.

Realizing sitting it out was more detrimental to my nerves than actually fighting the masses on the rink, I decided to give it another go-around. My patience hadn’t improved much during my short hiatus and I found myself flat-out yelling at children because fucking RINK REF wasn’t doing his job. What a motherfucking waste of a striped shirt and whistle. Then a parapet of inexperienced wheeled grade schoolers forced me into the wall and your fucking mother could have easily steamed some goddamn succotash on my face after that. I resumed skating with locked-arms and hands balled into fists.

When 18+ skate was announced, I legit cheered. Loudly. There was a vigorous Roof Raise connected to it. However, it didn’t take long to figure out that even 18+ skate was going to be a bust. The rink was full of honky doofs that day. I watched some older man attempt to do a split in the middle of the rink, only to fall on his broad cracker ass. Bring back the black people!

We left shortly after an hour and a half, and Henry had to buy me a shamrock shake to cheer me up.

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I try not to get too hung up on that whole Valentine’s Day bullshit, but when Chooch came home from school on Monday with a Valentine for his DAD, I kind of lost my shit a little.

Chooch gave a blase shrug and a mumbled, “I don’t know” when I asked him why he made one for his dad and not me.

“IT’S BECAUSE YOU LIKE DADDY BETTER! YOU HATE ME!” I wailed, because this is how really extraordinary,  properly emotional and not-at-all competitive moms choose their words.

Quickly realizing his entire childhood was on the verge of going up in flames, he very desperately pleaded, “No! I LOVE YOU!” and then threw his arms around me in a hug fraught with fear and regret.

I made sure I reminded him every chance I got how this MISTAKE of a Valentine had decimated my already fragile feelings.

“You’re overreacting,” Henry laughed after receiving my hysteric phone call in which I tossed out promises to hedgeclip his ballsack when he came home from work. “He was probably sitting with the girls and they probably wanted to make one for their dads, so he just followed along.”

WHATEVER.

That child must have reminded me 100x yesterday that he loves me.  And when I came home from work last night, he was so excited to give me my Valentine’s Day present, which he had picked out all on his own. I guess he felt this was his penance, I don’t know.

An iCarly messenger bag! I was elated. I can’t wait to use it at Warped Tour this summer. He did such a good job that I decided to let him off the hook. But I was still hating on Henry, because everything is his fault.

EVERYONE LIKES HENRY BETTER. God, I can’t stand it. I am super competitive when it comes to Henry, and I will elaborate on soon, in another post.

Chooch drew a heart on the envelope to my card and I was really kind of smitten with the fact that he emulates his heart after my own.

(Except I usually have a little tail on mine, but that’s probably too sophisticated for him to handle.)

This new strange, loving behavior carried over to today when he gave me a spontaneous kiss in the middle of purposely letting me die in a very irritating game of Super Mario Bros. on Wii. I probably scared the shit out of that kid. He’s never going to want to do anything nice for Henry ever again, for fear of me shipping him off to an orphanage. On Father’s Day, he’s going to frisbee Henry a card and scream, “HERE’S YOUR CARD BUT I STILL LOVE MOMMY BETTER!” while flinching in fear of my reaction.

Fuck, I’m such a fantastic mom.

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The other day, Chooch’s class got to do the Santa Shop thing. I took him to school with a check in the envelope the school sent home with him, which had room to list who we wanted the kid to shop for, and how much to spend on each person.

Henry figured $3 was enough for everyone, but I wanted very badly to scrawl “Sky’s the limit” next to “Mom” and “.05” next to “Dad.” We also included Blake, Henry’s sister and mom, and Tommy and Jessy got to go under the “special friends” category. Special friends? Isn’t that what the dirty drunk down the street says to all the little girls to get them to lift their dresses?

I have no idea what was going through Chooch’s mind when it was his turn to peruse the tables of merch. He brought back a bag of crap, obviously – I wouldn’t expect anything more from Santa Shop – but the problem was that I wasn’t sure how the crap was supposed to be distributed. Whatever he got for me (and it was the most expensive thing he bough according to the tally on the returned envelope!), he immediately snatched and disappeared into his room with it.

Then there was a hot pink rubber popper, the likes of which I haven’t seen since 1989-era gumball machines.

“That’s for Tommy!” he yelled. Of course it is! He’s a hunter, I’m sure he can find a use for it. (And once he does, I’m calling PETA.)

A tiny alien attached to a parachute, just what Blake always wanted.

Some small stuffed toy, which was originally for Aunt Kelly, but then it was for Grandma Judy. In the end, Chooch seemed to have claimed it for himself. So I don’t know.

Jessy got probably the nicest thing out of the lot – a set of very kawaii erasers, which I’m sure is something she waits for every night on QVC. “Oh please let Smiling Ice Cream Cone Eraser hour be on tonight!” I imagine she says every night when she dons her Hello Kitty robe and curls up with her manga collection.

And of course – cat toys. He went .50 cents over budget for motherfucking cat toys! Ew, I was so pissed.

“It’s not about the gifts or the money,” Henry reasoned with me over the phone. “It’s about the learning experience and independence of shopping alone.” Oh well look at Mr. Parenting Handbook. Easy for him to say when he’s not the one who wrote the fucking check to fund this educational experience!

The cats fucking loved their little plush mice, though.

Thirty seconds later, Chooch ripped the tail off one (a toy, not a cat) and then also broke his stuffed toy. (It’s some garishly colored insect – a dragonfly maybe?)

When I was a kid, I bought much better gifts. What? I did! And I’m sure none of it ever turned anyone’s skin green.

“Hey,” I said, holding up the bag. “You didn’t get anything for daddy?”

“Yeah I did,” Chooch replied snottily, sitting on the couch eating a candy cane.

“Well what is it?” I asked, looking in the bag again to see if I missed something. Like an invisible fence for daddies.

“This candy cane!” Chooch said irritably, plucking it from his mouth to show me.

***

When Henry came home from work that day, Chooch wanted to show him what he got me so he brought it back downstairs all secretly. Then, standing three feet away from me, he hoarsely whispered to Henry, “It’s for mommy.”

“I know,” Henry whispered back.

“It’s a snowman!” Chooch continued in a loud whisper.

“I know,” Henry answered, not bothering to whisper now.

“Don’t tell her what it is! It’s for Christmas.”

At least he brought home change.

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I have blog apathy, so here is an old LiveJournal post from August 2007. Peace out, girl scout.

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It’s been dire straits ’round here ever since our car abandoned us. Thankfully, Henry’s mother has been generous enough to let us use her car whenever she doesn’t need it (and as luck would have it, that’s quite often). We decided to be nice and not force her to rot away in her apartment over the weekend, so we rented a car at Enterprise. It was one of those vixens on four wheels — a Mazda 3. I wanted to hug it every time I got into it. But that’s not the point of this story.

Last night, Henry informed me that he wouldn’t be home in time from work to return the car by its noon curfew. When it slowly (but surely!) dawned on me that what he was really trying to say was that I was going to actually have to get off my ass and do something, I freaked out.

“But I don’t know how.” A good enough excuse as any, I figured.

“What do you mean you don’t know how? Just drive it the whole whopping one mile down the street to Enterprise, give them the key, and have one of them bring you back home.

”

Oh, anxiety! Hold your horses!

I began to grow weary just by imagining the impending hassle, much like the day when I will round a corner and get my head lopped off by a sickle-wielding serial killer.

My mom came over this morning so I could get it over with while my wrestler-child was napping. As I backed the car up the driveway, I glanced at the car seat, still fully-fastened to the backseat. I’ve never had to deal with removing the front-facing car seat, only the rear-facing carrier.

“Mother fucker!” I yelled. Henry was supposed to take that out for me. I threw the car in park and climbed into the backseat, thinking that I was about to embark on an easy journey. Within five seconds, it became clear that this was a job for a spinach-eating Mensa member. My mental energy quickly waned as I searched for the magical release button to make all my dreams come true.

Right after I nearly snapped off a finger, the spandexed idiot we employ to mow our lawn crept up on me, whining about his six dollars. I’m pretty sure he’s that paper boy from Better Off Dead, all grown up. I told him I didn’t have it and he did this really obnoxious motion with his head, like he was using his body movements to whine “Aw, maaaan.”

“When can I stop back?” he asked impatiently. Just to get this asshole off my back, I ran into the house to see if my mom had cash, which she didn’t. But at least it looked like I kind of cared by asking her.

I reported the bad news to him and he stalked off. “Sorry!” I yelled sarcastically at his back. I also didn’t appreciate the way he looked the rental car up and down, because I know he was thinking, “Oh, she drives this but doesn’t have six fucking dollars for me?”

Asshole. I’m so over him anyway.

Returning to the task at hand, I accepted the fact that I needed help. My mom came out and together we toiled and bumbled in the backseat until I broke down and called Henry. Obscenities were sprayed, nails were broken, ulcers burned, and my mom was bracing herself for a trip to the nearest psych ward, before I finally conceded that I’d just let one of the guys at Enterprise do it for me, per Henry’s suggestion.

“They know how to do it there!” he promised.

When I handed the key over at the counter a few minutes later, I asked the Enterprise employee if someone there could help me remove the car seat.

“Um, I can see if someone will try, but I can’t make any promises. None of us here have children.”

An older woman was leaning against the counter next to me, waiting for her invoice. “I can help you; I have three children of my own.” I thanked her, but a young man in a dress shirt popped up from behind a desk and enthusiastically asked me to let him try.

“I’m up for the challenge!” he said eagerly, like I was holding tryouts for some outrageous Japanese game show.

After a few minutes, I returned to the lot to check on his progress. He got about as far as I had.

“What did your boyfriend do, glue this in here?” he laughed, but I got a real sense of anguished emasculation out of it.

The mother-of-three jogged over. “No luck? Let me try.” She climbed in the backseat and began furiously working to unsnap the opposite side.

After a minute passed, she turned around and looked at me. “Holy hell!” she laughed, as she blew out a breath saddled with exhaustion.

The woman she was traveling with got out of their minivan and came over. “I gotta see this car seat!” she said with wide eyes.

The mother-of-three saw this as her way out. “Oh good, see if you can do it!” she yelled over her shoulder as she ran back inside the office.

“Wha—I just said I wanted to look at it!” But she shrugged and climbed in anyway.

Another Enterprise employee came over and the first one called out, “Oh good, are you here to help?”

“Aw shit, no. I’m just here to take the girl back home.” What a nice gentleman. I’m sure that will be a pleasant cruise to look forward to, I thought.

Oh yes, Henry. This is so easy, that’s why it took three people to do it. I hope we get a car soon so I never have to worry about this car seat bullshit again. Or, I hope Henry and I stay together at least until Chooch graduates from car seats. The reality of either option is a scary one though.

The Enterprise employee finally dominated the car seat. He stood up and stretched his back. “Tell your boyfriend not to work out so hard!” he laughed. Yeah, I’ll tell him to lay off the cock-pulling, I thought bitterly.

Everyone involved had a nice laugh and exchanged contact info for a future reunion, and then I got back in the car with my chauffeur. We made strained small talk as he shouted and pumped his arm out the window every time we drove past his homies. Which was a lot. Then he flipped on the radio just in time to catch a lovely joint by Bel Biv Devoe.

“Daaaamn, I always forget how old this jam is!” I nodded in agreement and added that I thought I was in middle school when it came out. You know, just to tip him off that I have more urban in my blood than my pasty-suburban facade lets on.

I guess it didn’t impress him much (sometimes my flava just can’t be sensed, I guess), because instead of pulling into my driveway, he sidled up on the curb across from my house, leaving me to cross the street with a big ass car seat over my shoulder. It was kind of like the car rental walk of shame, I guess.

Edit: A quote from Henry. “It’s the easiest thing in the world.”

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I had given Henry explicit instructions on what to get for the cupcakes while I was at work Thursday night. The plan was that he was going to bake them and then I would attempt to not look like an honorary member of The Dream Team while recreating what I saw in the last issue of Better Homes & Gardens (which somehow is delivered with my name on it, but Henry is always quick to whisk it from the mail slot before I throw it away).

When I came home from work, it was after 9pm and I quickly saw that Henry had not yet made the cupcakes.

“I’ll get to it,” he kept muttering.

I distracted myself by stuffing the treat bags with lame little Halloween party favors and candy. Then I panicked because I wasn’t sure if the game we had in mind was good enough, so I printed out Halloween mazes and stuffed those in the treat bags too. Goddamn children.

This took about fifteen minutes, start to finish. One could imagine how exhausted I was, having single-handedly carried this entire party on my back while Henry pranced around in his underwear.

Somewhere around 10:30pm, I found out that Henry had purchased red decorating gel instead of black. RED! I cornered him in the kitchen as he mixed the cupcake batter and laid into him for being so worthless, so stupid, so irresponsible, so UNRELIABLE.

We broke up for the second time that night, but he still put his big boy pants on and went back to the store in search of black decorating gel.

By the time he came back, I noticed that he also forgot the pretzel sticks/Frankenstein neck bolts.

“I just came back! I am not going to the store again!” Henry shouted.

I raised a knife.

We broke up again.

I know, I know: Erin, why didn’t you just go to the store yourself? And let that motherfucker win?! Never. Let me remind you that the fact I haven’t eaten meat since 1996 was born from my impenetrable stubbornness. My head, it is that of a bull. (And not just because I’m that ugly.)

“Just forget it!” I screamed. “Fuck the cupcakes! I just won’t take them!”

“Fine,” Henry mumbled, pushing past me and going to sit down on the couch.

“NO I’M JUST KIDDING WE NEED THE CUPCAKES OMG GET BACK IN THERE!” I yelled, heart rate up, left arm tingling. Ew I fucking hate parties. As Henry walked by to go back in the kitchen, I muttered, “But the cupcakes are going to look pathetic since you forgot the pretzels, good job.” I saw him tense up for a second, like he maybe was contemplating pushing me into the hot stove, but then he adjusted his Susie Homemaker ruffled apron and went back to ladling batter into the cupcake tray thing.

“Did you start cooking the spaghetti yet?” I asked. We needed a lot of spaghetti noodles for the stupid game that the other moms so thoughtfully left for me to come up with.

“Can I get through the cupcakes first?” he snipped, and we broke up again.

Around 11:30, the cupcakes were cooled off and it was time to start icing them. Henry mixed up a bowl of purple frosting while I struggled with the orange. I didn’t mix it well enough, so all the cupcakes I frosted had dark orange striations throughout them, and that’s on top of the sides I smashed in from gripping too hard.

“Look,” Henry instructed. “Turn the cupcake with your other hand so the frosting goes on easier.” But as usual, I ignored his tip and continued glooping on mounds of frosting before moving on to the frustrating task of smoothing that shit out.

I started to cry. Then I screamed, slammed down the cupcake I was working on, and marched out of the kitchen.

But not before breaking up again, followed by a death threat.

“You’re a fucking retard,” I heard Henry say as he examined the three cupcakes I managed to frost before having a full-blown temper seizure. I really believe that it takes a special kind of person to be able to work with sprinkles and frosting without winding with brain matter Pollacked across the kitchen wall.

I started to watch the Jersey Shore reunion show, mouth still molded into a scowl, until I realized that I couldn’t let Henry take all the credit for the cupcakes. And he would, too. I knew it. So I went back in the kitchen and pushed Henry out of the way. He had a plateful of large marshmallows which he had previously rolled through green glittery sprinkles. I picked one up and decided to start working on the Frankenstein heads, that maybe if I concentrated real hard on that, I could block out the fact that Henry was two feet away from me, making me hate life.

By then, it was midnight.

I did that high-pitched shriek that happens when something isn’t going my way.

“What?” Henry yelled.

“THIS BLACK GEL IS TOO THICK! THIS FRANKENSTEIN IS RUINED!” I hurled it into the garbage.

“Great,” Henry said sardonically. “Now we’re going to be short one marshmallow.” Turns out there was just enough green sprinkles for fourteen marshmallows, the exact number of kids in Chooch’s class. “If you weren’t being such a BITCH, I probably could have fixed that one,” Henry sneered and I wanted to skin him alive.

“Oh you think you’re so fucking perfect!” I spat. And we broke up so badly that I created a profile on Match.com.

Whoever lives in this house after us is going to be haunted by all the ire left clinging to the walls from our mutual belligerence. And that’s assuming we both make it out alive. Otherwise, someone might want to consider taking a wrecking ball to 3021 My Street.

Being short a marshmallow, I made the executive decision to only use half and do spiderwebs on the other cupcakes. Oh great idea, Erin Rachelle. Next time, maybe try to remember that you have an unsteady hand and SUCK at decorating.

How do you bitches make this look so easy?

I was standing over the oven, dragging a toothpick over these bastards, and GRUNTING. It was excruciating! You need precision for this shit. And precision and me? We’re not friends. We’re not even frenemies. In fact, if precision turned into a zombie, I’d push everyone out of the way so I could be the one to shoot it in the motherfucking head. Precision makes me cry, you guys. And I think I have arthritis now. I fucking hate you, too, spider webs.

I hate anything to do with baking! I hate frosting! I hate food coloring! I hate the kitchen! I hate Henry!

I do like licking the batter off that mixing contraption though.

The worst part is that I kept catching Henry trying not to laugh when my sanity was very clearly slipping through my fingers like sand through an hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

Of course, they looked nothing like Frankenstein and I had a failure-induced panic attack. Then I realized that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have a variety.

“What if the kids start fighting because they all want one with a marshmallow head?” I freaked out.

“It’ll be a good lesson for them. You don’t always get what you want in life,” Henry said matter-of-factly. That’s great, but I didn’t want to be there when parts of Mr. Potato Head began flying as the kids fought each other with tinker toys and glue sticks and teachers staggered away with pencils jutting out from their femoral artery. You might be wondering what sort of impression I have in my mind of preschool classes. Obviously a very Mad Max, post-apocalyptic one.

It was nearly 1:00am by the time we finished decorating the fuckcakes. Henry and I slept in separate rooms.

FUCKERS!!!!

[Ed.Note: Henry can attest this is not an accurate account. It has been toned down. A lot.]

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We didn’t have much time after eating breakfast at the Traveler’s Club International Restaurant (it doubles as a TUBA MUSEUM and was a great pick by our tour guides, Bill & Jessi) because I had this dire urge to see the world’s largest cuckoo clock in Sugarcreek, Ohio. Every time I brought it up to Henry, he tugged on his collar and looked around for diversions, chainsaw guys, ditches in which to push me.

I wouldn’t drop it, though, and continued down the list of merits I had made for the cuckoo clock.

By 2:00pm, we were on the road. We made a quick stop in Luna Pier, because seeing Lake Erie was another very pressing thing on my list. Sure, I’ve seen Lake Erie from Pennsylvania and Ohio, even took a boat tour in Cleveland (if you were me, you too could live such a thrilling life). But I really needed to see it from MICHIGAN.

That fruity red dot of menstruation up there is Henry.

This is the closest thing to a beach we’ve come to since that shitty fucktastic trip to Okracoke we took in 2006 with those asshole Civil War reenactors. Chooch and I kicked off our shoes and took off.

Henry’s feet never even touched the sand.  “It’s just Lake Erie,” he kept saying, while Chooch and I squealed and frolicked like Hansel and Gretel dining on the witch’s carcass. Spectators probably thought we had just been let out of our cage in the basement. Henry does resemble a grizzled captor. In fact, on our way to Michigan, I mouthed “help” to the girl in the toll booth. Thanks for all the help, whore.

After Luna Pier, A LOT of driving happened. I found religious programming on the radio and pretended to be holy for a good hour while Henry scowled and periodically asked, “Can we turn this now?” while Chooch read his comic books quietly in the backseat. Jesus music is calming. Or maybe it’s hypnotic. In either case, it zipped my child’s lips, so praise be to Jesus and his Lambs of Christ.

At some point in Ohio, we turned off the highway and found ourselves up to our ears in Amish. (Henry says they were Mennonites, so we argued about that for awhile.) We rounded a bend and an old Amish man was standing on the side of the road.

I screamed.

“What? He’s probably just waiting for a buggy,” Henry reasoned.

“He looked to me like he was cursing us bastard civilians,” I argued. And then, “What happens if you run over an Amish person?”

Henry averted his eyes from the road long enough to look at me in disgust. “Um, you go to JAIL. They are people,” he reminded me. “Not animals.” A minute passed and I heard him repeat my question under his breath, shaking his head in exhaustion.

I didn’t know if they utilized the same legal system as us, OK? Jesus Christ, Henry. I thought maybe they left it up to the Lord; chased you around the farm with pitchforks, Benny Hill-style.

Aside from Amish culture, other things that jack off my fascination are all things Bavarian and Swiss, hence my determination to see this fucking cuckoo clock. Some of my fondest memories  are from childhood trips to Europe, helping my grandparents pick out cuckoo clocks in the Black Forest and traversing covered bridges in Lucerne. Eating fondue and watching lederhosened men blow into those Ricola horns. That’s always been my favorite region of Europe. And since returning there is nowhere in my near future, making pilgrimages to chintzy, kitschy Swiss-American tourist traps is the best I can do to keep my heart full of Toblerone and army knives.

I regaled Henry with stories from these past vacations while he prayed the GPS on his phone wasn’t leading us to our fate of becoming shoo-fly pie filling.

“You weren’t even listening to me,” I whined as he consulted his phone.

“Yes I was, and I’ve heard all of those stories before.”

Bastard. What a fucking bastard.

Here are some of my tweets from the Great Cuckoo Clock Pursuance, to give you a real-time feel for the awesomeness of being in our car:

About the same time my phone lost service, we crossed the threshold for the town of Sugarcreek, Ohio’s Swiss Wonderland.

The bad vibes were immediate. Something made me feel uncomfortable; maybe it was the lack of people and how it caused the town to be quiet as a graveyard. I don’t even really remember many cars passing by, although we did see a cop idling in a parking lot with a book.

The downtown portion of Sugarcreek was quaint, charming. But also mostly deserted. There seemed to be some people in one of the restaurants, which has swiss steak on special. I wanted to go. Not to eat the swiss steak, but to see what the townies were like. Henry said no, of course. Why eat at a real restaurant when we can stop at a gas station and get hot dogs?! (Because that’s seriously what he did. And I got a Special K bar. Now there’s a real meal to say grace for.)

Henry’s GPS alerted him to make a left off the main road. A few feet later, I saw it.

And it was in pieces.

I didn’t tell Henry this, but a Roadside America user posted a tip saying that as of March, the cuckoo clock was out of commission for repairs. If I told him that, he definitely wouldn’t have taken the chance. But I thought maybe it might have been all bandaged up by then and ready to cuckoo. I needed to see for myself.

“You’re a fucking asshole,” Henry muttered. But we got out of the car anyway. Chooch and I went over for a closer inspection while Henry leaned against the car, texting his work boyfriend about what an awful lay his shitty girlfriend is.

Further research (which would have been helpful prior to making this ridiculous detour) informed me that pieces of the clock have been auctioned off, including the evergreens and little  Swiss people.

Shit, I thought driving through the town was creepy? Poking around this over-sized clock at dusk was even more spine-tingling. I had a distinct sensation that townies were watching us from their windows, sizing us up  for future cuckoo clock adornments. Can you picture a taxidermied-Chooch twirling out from the clock’s bowels every hour? Because I kind of can. I ushered him back into the car, ducking around Henry’s choleric glare.

“We should come back for the Swiss Festival in October,” I suggested, reading  from the town’s official website on my phone. I looked up just in time to see Henry vivisecting me with his mind.

Somewhere between more Amish arguments (which found Henry yelling, “Shoo fly pie is regional!”) and crossing the Pennsylvania border, two vultures nearly careened into (MY SIDE OF) the windshield.

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Don’t worry, I only let him wear theses for >10 seconds, for fear of his eyeballs fleeing their sockets in fear.

I really botched the Great Glasses Getting project of 2010. They don’t work at all. I mean, yes – they enhance my vision. But not without major side effects. Such as:

• Unless I’m sitting stalk-still, it appears that I’m peering out of a fish bowl. Everything is curved. I can’t remember if convex or concave is the word I’m looking for, and to be honest, I’m too busy thinking of when I’m going to get to the cemetery today to worry too much about dictionary.com’ing that shit.
• Saturday morning, I had the brilliant idea of writing in my blog while glassed. Thought it would be good practice, train my eyes to be more like those of goldfish. It was worse than trying to type without any visual aid at all! Every time I attempted to glance down at the keyboard, I’d recoil in horror because the fingers tapping along the keys looked like they belonged to tiny (not yet dead)  Jon Benet Ramsey hands. EVERYTHING IS MINIATURIZED IF I LOOK DOWN, WHAT THE FUCK.
• Sunday morning was the food test. If I could EAT with the green monstrosity perched on my nose bridge, I could be convinced to keep trying these frustrating exercises. A simple bowl of cereal – Honey Bunches of Oats, if you need to know for your case study – was all I was trying to conquer. Thanks to my inability to look down, my chin, cleavage, and the person I keep chained under the computer desk all thanked me for the lovely breakfast.

So the search continues. I might suck it up and ask a professional for help. I mean an eye doctor, not a psychiatrist, though I’ve got one of them on speed dial too.

In the meantime, I’m popping the lenses out and keeping the frames as a hot accessory. (When I said that to one of the guys at work, he pantomimed putting them on as pants. I was a little insulted. They’re not that big!) Now Alisha will definitely be wanting me to accompany her to the gay bar all night, every night.

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Hey, what do we do around here for Mother’s Day? Nothing. What do we do for Father’s Day? Oh, spend the day at an amusement park, no biggie.

But I don’t mind too much because it’s more for me than Henry anyway. He’s all, “I’m just happy I get to spend the day with the people I love” and, after barfing in a boot, I’m like, “Who, skanky teens in bikini tops and booty shorts? Middle-aged broads spilling out of their tank tops, boasting Tasmanian Devil tattoos and stretch marks?” Because these are the types of people with whom Kennywood is predominantly filled.

It turned out to be a miserable day. It was super hot, which I didn’t really mind, but I was worried about how much money we spent to go in the first place, never mind how much we’d be spending on food and beverages once inside. Blake wasn’t feeling well so I didn’t want to drag him on too many ridiculous rides, and Chooch was just being a wishy-washy cry baby bitch.

I wanted to start out easy by going on the super lame Garfield-themed boat ride that’s right near the entrance. I thought it would be a good first ride for Chooch, as it’s proved to be in years past. But I was vetoed because what do I know anyway, I’m a high school AND college drop out. Henry decided it was best to start him out big, so we took him on his first non-baby roller coaster, the Jack Rabbit. It’s a pretty non-threatening wooded coaster, but it does have a double-dip, and that’s what I was worried about for him. I kept imagining him being sprung from his seat and thirty years from now becoming an urban legend because no one actually remembers if some four-year-old actually did plummet to his death on the Jack Rabbit back in those crazy 2010’s or if it was just a story a clave of moms made up to deter their children from ever wanting to ride a roller coaster,  ever again.

I don’t really think Chooch knew what he was in for when Blake guided him straight to the front seat. Henry and I sat directly behind them, and I watched as Chooch scrunched up against Blake’s side for the entire duration. He didn’t cry, but I could tell, just by his body language, that he probably thought my threats of him going to Hell were finally coming into fruition. He seemed fine when we got off the ride, but when I asked him if he liked it, he very sincerely and sing-songily replied, “No, not really!”

It ruined him for the rest of the day, I know it did. We would get to the front of the line for the basest of family rides, like the types rides that pregnant women could ride and feel confident that they won’t get off leaving a trail of miscarriage in their wake, only for Chooch to say, “Um, no, I’m not riding this. Let’s go, kbye.” There were times when I wanted to push him, but people were looking. So we were good parents and left the lines with him every time, while threatening him in terse tones through taut lips.

I think I told him like 67865 times that he was ruining my day, and then Henry would have to remind me that mothers shouldn’t say things like this to their children and I was like, “Bitch, don’t you know I’m not a mother when I’m at Kennywood? I’m a fucking KID who wants to RIDE some mother fucking RIDES.”

We did, however get him on the Raging Rapids, which thoroughly pissed him off.

Slightly amused after a light sprinkle

Complained a lot about his new shoes getting wet

Not actually crying, but REALLY FUCKING BENT OUT OF SHAPE

Chooch was relatively mild-mouthed for most of the ride, until getting assaulted by the waterfall, to which he exclaimed in a very angry tone, “Oh, FUCK THAT.” He sounded so dire that I didn’t even have the heart to yell at him for taking his swearing side show on the road.

At one point, I tried on a suit of graciousness (it didn’t fit me very well, but at least I tried) and suggested that Henry and Blake ride the Phantom’s Revenge together because the line looked short. And you know, it was fucking Father’s Day after all. I figured Chooch and I could go on Noah’s Ark during that time. Noah’s Ark is just this large walk-through ride that thankfully doesn’t have the religious overtones you’d think it would. It’s like, every child’s favorite ride though, because it’s dark, fun, has moving floors and fake animals to look at.

Chooch has been through it three times in the past, but apparently he doesn’t remember because once we got in line, he deemed that it was going to be “too dark in there, let’s go.” I was like, “Asshole, this ride was fucking built for children! It is NOT SCARY! You watch motherfucking Friday the 13th and don’t bat an eye lash, but you’re afraid to walk through some lame ass boat with a bunch of fake ass fucking props in it?” Oh my lord, I was so disappointed in him.

So we spent a half an hour sitting on a ledge, waiting for Henry and Blake. By the time they got off the coaster, I was in full-blown sulk mode.

“I’m ready to dip up out of here,” I said disgustedly to Henry.

“What, why?” he asked.

“BECAUSE CHOOCH WON’T RIDE ANYTHING AND THIS WAS A WASTE OF MONEY AND MY WHOLE DAY IS RUINED!” I wailed. And the camera battery died after 30 minutes! And half the rides were closed! And I didn’t have a friend to take with me! And I felt fat!

But then Blake, worlds more mature at just seventeen than I am at thirty, suggested that Henry and I go ride something like a real life couple and he’d take Chooch to get pizza.  So Henry and I rode the Music Express, which was fun because I got to add extra curricular punches and pinches on top of the standard pre-packaged pulverizing that comes included with spinny rides. And after that, I dragged him on the Cosmic Chaos, which is still relatively new and he’s never actually seen in action. Until he was stuck smack in the middle of line when the next round started. As Henry watched it do its thang, he gravely murmured, “Oh, Erin…” I think that was my favorite part of the day. Either that or when Blake and I were on the Aero 360 and I asked him if he knew the scene kid who was sitting next to me. “What, I’m supposed to know him because he’s a scene kid?” Blake asked, upset with my assumption, like it was racial profiling or something.

After that, we tried to get Chooch to ride more things but he was being a big baby, and not even a cute one, but the kind you want to punch and then leave on someone’s porch in a laundry basket, so I threw my own fit and stalked off toward the entrance, where I sat on a bench alone. Literally, I sat there with my lip all pursed and quivering, arms crossed, and a thousand murderous scenarios screeching through my broken mind like a rusty train on chalkboard tracks.  This was around the time I tweeted, “I wish I could stuff Today in a cadaver and fuck it in the ass with a blow torch.” Then I decided, I’ll show them, I’m going to leave! So I texted Blake and said, “I’m leaving!” to which he replied, “But you have all the money!” and then Henry left Blake and Chooch in Kiddieland to come calm me down.

Which he did by buying me food because, being the Erin specialist that nine bi-polar years have made him, he recognized in the situation all the signs of Erin Famine. And I was cool after that! We went back to KiddieLand and Blake was like, “You kids go on and have fun. I’ll stay here with Chooch.” Really, this was because Blake wasn’t feeling well and standing among parents watching small children oscillate slowly on hideous animal faced-carriages was more appealing to him than getting whiplash.

So Henry and I got to be a Real Life Couple and ride things together! I can’t remember this ever really happening too often at Kennywood. I know that he and I have never been there alone together, so this was sort of like a DATE. It was weird! And he was really giddy and kept trying to kiss me and I had to remind him that I hadn’t suddenly abandoned my hatred of PDA. He even grabbed my boobs right as our photo was taken on the Log Jammer and I was like, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Did Blake give you E?”

Then I had to stand around impatiently while he played that money-guzzling game Pong Pond, where you get like, seven chances to bounce a ping pong ball and hope that it lands in a plastic lily pad. I’ve yet to see him win at this game.

“This is the only game I’m good at!” he whined after I begged him to stop spending money on it. “I’ve won it, like three times!”

“Seriously? You’ve won three times in the thirty years you’ve been coming here?”

He thought about this. “Yes. So I’m about due for a win.” I had to pull him away. Unless he was going to wrap a stuffed animal around my goddamn finger and propose, I wasn’t about to stand there and cheerlead for him while he blew through all of MY MONEY.

Then the night turned sour. Blake wanted to leave because he wasn’t feeling well at all, which was understandable, but Chooch had to play fucking mind games with me the whole way back to the entrance. “I want to ride this.” We’d get in line. “No, I don’t think so.”

I was so over it! Walking past Garfield’s Nightmare, the extremely docile family boat ride Chooch pussied out on twice that day, he begged us to take him on it.

“Hell no,” I said. “I’m done playing these games with you. All you’re going to do is get in line and change your mind, so stop wasting my time.” And he threw a full blown fit, right there in front of all the other children who were like, “Yay! We’re at Kennywood! We appreciate this opportunity so much, Mommy and Daddy! We are going to ride every single ride to make sure we get our money’s worth, and you will be so proud of us! And before we go to bed tonight, we will be sure to read from our Bible!”

This was the point where I quickened my pace, and left Blake and Henry behind me to pull Chooch along, kicking and screaming. He cried and screamed the whole way home while I stared out the window and tried to remember what it was like to be single.

Happy Father’s Day, Henry! I’m leaving!

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Well. My glasses are here. Yaaayyyy….

I hate them. They’re not big enough! Their width is pleasing to me, and I can almost touch the bottom of the frames with my lips if I scrunch up my face enough…

but they don’t extend as high into the heavens as I had hoped. I would have liked them to at least cover my eye brows, the way my sunglasses do.

I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Grin and bear it? We all know I’m not that type of lady. Probably, I’ll just have to walk around with magnifying glasses from now on.

Cry for me. CRY FOR ME NOW. (I know, this was a little too much Erin for one entry. I’ll go back to only posting one photo of myself a year!

)

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