Shippensburg, PA would have absolutely no value to me if not for Ed Helms and his impeccably-constructed Tiny World, a small village in his yard built for his cats.  Henry seemed pretty ambivalent about this stop on my agenda, and I think he was going to try and dispute it so I made sure to loudly announce, “But it’s a town built for CATS!” which made Chooch’s interest pique real quick, and soon Henry had two children whining and begging to visit Tiny World. Henry glared at me for using the c-word. “Cat” is like the equivalent to smelling salt for Chooch. He can be in the deepest zone, a self-induced pouting coma, but someone casually says the c-word and he’s very much in the present, yelling, “WHERE? WHERE? WHERE IS  THE CAT!?”

Sometimes I don’t even know why Henry bothers to object. His voice of dissent falls on pretend-deaf ears every time.

As Henry wound the car over country roads, he asked, “Um, this isn’t at someone’s house, is it?” I answered him by looking out the window and ignoring him.

Parts of Tiny World can be seen from the road, so I screamed for Henry to pull over the first second I glimpsed a hillside dotted with a doll-sized community. We parked in a small, makeshift gravel lot next to several other cars. At first it seemed like Tiny World was going to be booming with tourists, but we were the only oglers the whole time, so I guess the cars belonged to the family.

I don’t know what I was expecting, just some plywood shells I suppose, but Ed’s attention to detail was impeccable. I read online that he had no formal training in this stuff, just sat down and did it for no reason other than because he wanted to. And you know what, that’s inspiring even to someone like me. If I want to be a brain surgeon, I should just sit down and do it! And boy, have I got just the person to be my guinea pig.

The town was a tiny bit weathered, some of the furnishings had toppled over and cobwebs abound, but it was still pretty surprising that it wasn’t in a greater state of disarray. The proprietor is apparently pretty old and was suffering some health problems according to a Roadside America update from 2011, so it’s hard to say if upkeep is being honored at all.

The attic of one of the larger plantation-esque homes had items all strewn about and I wondered if it was intentionally done to make it look haunted. In either case, I legitimately shivered and stepped away from the window before I wound up accidently staring into the eyes of Bagul.

Dead rooster in the barn’s hay loft.

To be honest, I kind of liked that it had an abandoned tone to it. It made me feel like we were being watched from the nearby woods, hackneyed hillbillies lining us up in the crosshairs of their laser guns, preparing to shrink us down into Tiny World citizens. I already knew which house I was going to move into. (The one with the haunted attic, duh.)

If you like trains, then one might imagine you would enjoy the Tiny World Train Station.

That wallpaper! And look at that tiny box of thread on the sewing machine – even if you’re some joyless cat-hating asshole who thinks that building a sprawling town for feral cats is a waste of time, you still have to give respect to the details that went into this project — it’s a true labor of love.

There was even a relatively hot picture of Jesus Christ on the wall of the church.

Chooch’s succinct review, typed on his own: “It’s cool!  it’s kitty awesome! it’s  really freakin cool as shit.”

Again, the reviews I read online weren’t exactly current, but Tiny World is supposedly a hot commodity for all of the neighbors during the Christmas season. We noticed quite a bit of leftover Christmas lights and decorations peeking out here and there, so God only knows the last time the holiday lights set-up was functioning.

Built into the entrance/exit trellis is a pot for donations which I insisted on contributing. This seemed to prickle Papa Tight Wad’s asshole, but he finally handed Chooch a dollar for the pot.

“I WANT TO PUT MONEY IN TOO!” I cried. “IT WAS MY IDEA TO COME HERE!!!”

Henry sighed wearily and slapped another buck in my opened, whiny palm, which I then happily dropped into the collection hole.

“I’m so glad we came out here! It was totally worth it!” I gushed while Henry tried to find his way back to the highway and a gas station before Chooch pissed his pants. “Wasn’t it awesome?!” I cried, shaking Henry’s arm.

He didn’t answer, just continued to drive while looking like the personification of FML.

Henry, actually SMILING was washing the car windows! It’s a road trip miracle!

We also visited the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, but I don’t feel that it’s appropriate or respectful to include that in this post.

To lighten the mood, we stopped in Bedford for a photo op with a large Coffee Pot, which used to be a lunch stand way back in the day. Like all awesomely tacky roadside attractions, it was in threat of being demolished in the 90s, but was eventually restored and is now used as a landmark.

THANK GOD!

“No, that’s OK,” Henry mumbled when I asked him if he was going to get out of the car and gawk at it with me and Chooch.

After Chooch accidentally knocked off part of the coffee pot (in his defense, that pot has structural leprosy), we both turned into royal motherfuckers. Henry of course knew this was because we were hungry and FINALLY stopped at a Valley Dairy to feed us.

“Hey Mommy, knock knock,” Chooch said after our food was served and we began to return to our non-surly, hyper selves.

“Who’s there?” I begrudgingly went along. His knock knock jokes are the worst.

“Room service!” And then we both laughed our food all over the table while Henry simply frowned at the memory of his stressful experience the night before at the hotel.

“What are you looking at?” Chooch asked me as I stared off into the distance while slowly eating a scoop of maple pecan ice cream. (Hello Weight Watcher narcs, I was on “vacation.”)

“Nothing, I’m just thinking,” I answered.

“Oh,” Chooch shrugged. “I always figured that when you do stuff like that, you’re wondering why Daddy won’t marry you.”

HOW ASTUTE.

—————

That night, after we had been home for a few hours, Chooch sighed, “I miss yesterday.”

“What part do you miss?” I asked.

“Uh, Pierce the Veil,”  he answered in that awesomely snotty teenaged tone.

Me too, Chooch. Me too.

So much love for that entire weekend!

The “I’d Rather Be Doing Anything Else But Driving to Lancaster to see Pierce the Veil” frown.

I’m sure he’ll be fine once he gets to drink flat Amish root beer.

In other PTV news, Chooch drew this for Vic. He said he’s going to write “Vic, you’re the best singer” on it & I almost cried a little. <3

“Everyone at work said there’s nowhere to get good fruit downtown,” I told Henry in a sneering voice.

“Everyone? Everyone who?” Henry smirked.

“The whole department*! They all said ‘tell Henry to go fuck himself!’ So go fuck yourself,” I said, patting him on the stomach.

“Do I have to prove all you fuckers wrong?” he said, beginning to get all up in arms.

“Even Barb said so, and she’s well-versed in Things That Are Downtown,” I said, but Henry had already enlisted his phone to solve the problem.

“Rosebud!” Henry shouted, the glow of his cellphone screen spotlighting his tired, yet smug, face.

“It’s on the corner of [streets I don’t know]!” He gloated about this for a few more seconds before mumbling, “Oh. Never mind. It’s closed.”

*(4 people.)

Chooch drew this last night before he went to bed and oh how we laughed! Henry, on the other hand, frowned disapprovingly.

For as much as Henry always says no, we still somehow manage to get our way.

My friend Michelle posted this on my Facebook timeline because she is smart and knows that I would:

• cry from laughing
• annoy the shit out of Henry with it

Boy, was she right.

“I bet Henry sings this song at work,” Michelle said, and oh! what an image!

I haven’t had much opportunity to really get under Henry’s skin with it, but on the way to work, I played it in the car and said, “Do you know what this is!?”

He only needed to hear about 3 seconds of it from my shitty iPhone speaker before smirking. “Yeah, it’s an old Faygo commercial. It’s on their website!” he scoffed, utterly unimpressed. And then he added, “There’s a rap version, too.”

OMG PLEASE TELL ME IT’S BY ICP.

For those who don’t know, Henry works for a beverage company that distributes Faygo.

****************

In other Henry news, I found out that he was actually planning on getting me this beautiful(ly creepy) antique wooden wheelchair for Valentine’s Day, but the motherfucker on Craigslist never responded. Henry, you should just quit Craigslist already. Anyway, just knowing that he was trying to do that for me made me be pretty nice to him all weekend.

I mean, other than the whole Redbox debacle.

I wondered why Henry was being so weird about me buying tickets to the upcoming Jonny Craig show in March. Every time I’d say, “I’m buying those tickets tomorrow,” he would snap, “No!!” I thought it was because he was writing checks behind my back again and we actually had no money.

But then he forwarded me the email ticket confirmation because I guess he was afraid I was going to start putting myself up for auction on fetishist websites again in order to buy the tickets myself.

So I guess I’m supposed to consider this my Valentine’s Day present (“I bought the tickets and I’M GOING WITH YOU, TOO. That says a lot!” Henry fought for his cause), and that’s sweet and all, but we all know I was getting these tickets one way or another.

Therefore, he still has to do something for me for Valentine’s Day. Maybe I’ll have him clean out the car or chase down a Mexican fruit cart. We shall see.

(What the fuck is up with that sinister Johan up there, anyway?)

———-

In other V-day news, I passed out my serial killer cards (and some of Chooch’s zombie ones as a safe bet for the people I wasn’t sure about). They were mostly well-received! However, I gave an Albert Fish to one of my co-workers, even though I don’t know her very well. Later, she came over to my office and, with a horrified look on her face, said, “I wiki’d the guy on the card you gave me and that was the most disturbing Wikipedia page I’ve ever seen!” And then, almost as an afterthought, she added, “Thanks for the Valentine.” I think she liked it!

I was telling Barb about it later and she was all, “OMG you gave her one of those cards? She’s so sweet and innocent! Good job, Erin!”

You know me, making friends wherever I go!

(Speaking of the serial killer Valentines, they got a little shout out on the FEARnet website!)

THIS IS REALLY HOW IT HAPPENED.

I have vowed to mention Henry’s brutal bowling blunder at least once a day on the Internet for an entire week. I have one day left. Maybe I’ll recreate the crime using Homies.

Happy Valentines’s Day, Henry, you brute.

The Crime: Domestic Abuse

The Perp: Blue-Collared 47-year-old male with an Amber Alert Mustache

The Scene of the Crime: Abby’s Birthday Party at the Playmor

Weapon: 14-Pound Bowling Ball

Saturday, February 9th, 2013. The Penguins were playing the Devils.  Kirk Cameron was speaking in Georgia about Christian marriage.  A club in Jersey was having a parade for Snooki’s kooka. We had two birthday parties to attend at two different bowling alleys.  It seemed like a pretty normal, low-key Saturday.

Until a sickening display of barbaric violence shook the Playmor bowling alley to its core.

At approximately 1:25pm, Henry’s blue-collar, calloused hands fumbled a pink 14-pound bowling ball and dropped it on an exact (some might say PREMEDITATED) trajectory to my precious left foot.

(Henry will argue that it was only 12-pounds, but please — let’s not listen to the VILLAIN of this story.)

What made it worse was that I didn’t even realize he had dropped it, so there was no anticipation, no toe-cracking preparedness. All I knew was that one minute everything was fine — an Emarosa song swimming in my ears, sparkly fairies twirling around my cherubic head — and then it wasn’t fine.

My Emarosa song scratched to a halt, the sparkly fairies fell to their death. And my foot, it felt ALL THE PAIN. Time stood still. Henry sounded like a miles-away dick-in-throat Barry White (“Oooooh myyyyyy Godddddd I’mmmm sooooo sorrryyyyyy! Pleassssse don’ttttt castratttttttte meeeeee!”); bowling pins crashing around me sounded like sheets of metal waving over my head; convents of nuns state-wide braced themselves for what Satan-approved words might come exploding out of my mouth.

But instead, I stood there in frozen silence. I was  too confused to really understand what was happening,  too overwhelmed with toe torture to field-kick Henry’s ballsack, too stunned to swear — props to me on that, since I was flanked by unlimited childrens’ birthday parties.

Not that it mattered, considering that the sound the bowling ball made upon impact was virtually onomatopoeia for: FUCKING OW OW MOTHERFUCKING OW, COCKSUCKER OUCH!.

Potty-mouthing aside, what I REALLY wanted to do was projectile vomit all over Henry’s son-of-a-bitchin’ mustache. Once the blinking neon PAIN, THIS IS TRUE PAIN signs faded out from my eyes, I was able to see Henry had a tangible sheath of AW FUCK clinging to his face, the official Saran Wrap of apologetic, frightened pussies. Bitch, you BEST be scared. There’s a reason I keep some of my old Darkchat friends around!

(For the black magick, duh.)

The first few minutes, I was too focused on pain management and muttering death threats at Henry to cry. But then my DICK HEAD son came over and motherfucking stomped on my poor damaged foot—the sound his shoe made against mine was the orchestral theme song for Evil Son From Hell. Moments later, my friend John, the dad of the birthday girl, came over to get our bowling game started and I blurted out, “HENRY DROPPED A BOWLING BALL ON MY FOOT” followed by an appearance of Pity Me tears.

Henry tried to be a Funny Man about it and said, “Well, I guess we’re done bowling, ha-ha” and seemed like he was prepared to return my bowling shoes.

“Um, I’m still going to bowl,” I snapped, and then asked him if he was capable of finding me a fucking ball without putting me in traction. And preferrably not one that’s 14 pounds, what the fuck.

Determined to be a hero, I bowled TWO FRAMES with an almost- broken foot, icing it in between turns.

Henry and I simultaneously realized that this was not the first time he tried to keep me down by handicapping me. He started to laugh about it but was abruptly silenced when I cupped his balls with a hand made of barbed wire, using nothing more than the power of my glaring eyes. I don’t know Henry, your mangled foot fetish seems pretty wanton at this point.

At least this time wasn’t soundtracked by the sickening crisp of cartilege breaking.

Henry’s “Please don’t call the cops/Jonny Craig is an angelic singer/I’ll clean the whole fucking house/WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY!?” look of Desperate Remorse.

————–

Right after Abby’s birthday party ended, we had to head straight to another bowling alley for Chooch’s cousin Zac’s birthday party. I made a beeline for Henry’s sister and whined, “Guess what your brother did!?”

Kelly offered an appropriate level of sympathy.

“Are we going to bowl here too?” I asked Henry as I shrugged off my coat.

“No, my finger hurts,” he said.

OH. WELL SHIT. Wouldn’t want him to be in ANY PAIN.

————–

Much later that night, I finally mustered up the courage to peel off my sock and inspect Henry’s ruthless damage. I already knew nothing was broken, as evidenced by my ability to wiggle my toes without agony catapulting me through the roof, but they looked looked like they went skinny-dipping in a blueberry pie.  Shit goddamn motherfuck it hurt so bad that I can’t believe the damage wasn’t greater. It was practically a My Left Foot sequel.

, originally uploaded by appledale.

This was taken in December 2011 at a Mexican restaurant a few months before my friend Kate suggested doing a Frown of the Day for Henry.

This is a special frown in that it is a PARTIAL. Look at that lip, it’s torn between mirth and disgust!

This is Henry’s face while I listen to new Jonny Craig songs on my phone, holla.

However, he’s not even trying to put up a fight about going to see Jonny Craig in March*.

Either he has lost his will to fight, is cheating on me, or is banking on Jonny OD’ing before then.

*OMG JONNY CRAIG IS COMING TO PITTSBURGH IN MARCH!!!

I GET TO SEE JONNY THREE DAYS AFTER SEEING PIERCE THE VEIL, WHATTTTT!

These were some of the best frowns of 2012. Here’s to many more in 2013!

Andrea suggested a calendar of frowns. Looks like we know what I’ll be working on this week!

A little blast from the past. Henry likes his weeners like he likes his broads: short n’ fat.

Just thought the Internet could use a little levity after these terrifying last few days. <3

In between bands at the Dance Gavin Dance show and Henry’s ignoring me, so here’s a picture of him hating his life right now.

At least they’re playing the greatest hits of the 70s over the sound system for him.

P.S. I just asked, “What would you do if I grabbed a mic and proposed to you?”

“Leave,” he muttered without hesitating.

Well, shit.

You know what Henry wanted to do on Sunday?

Sleep, watch FOX News, nap, snooze, eat some jerky, scratch his balls while dozing off, doze off, nap some more, watch things being made on the television, go to bed.

You know what Henry did instead? Every goddamn thing Chooch and I told him to do.

First, we went to the West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville, which I will get to later. (Warning: it’s gon’ be photo-heavy.) Immediately afterward, Chooch and I started whining about being hungry. I mean, we had literally just gotten in the car. We’re like a cuckoo clock for hunger.

“Oh Jesus Christ, here we go,” Henry spat, stupidly thinking he could drive 90 minutes home and just feed us whatever orphanage porridge du jour he had planned.

Seriously, almost everything Henry cooks us for dinner is gray. Sometimes olive and throw-up. Indian porridge, I guess.

“There’s nowhere to eat here anyway,” Henry smugly (and wrongfully) pointed out. So I countered with at least 6 different restaurants I saw as Henry sped past.

I don’t know what made me latch on to Young’s Cafeteria, but when we started to pass it, I screamed to Henry to turn in there.

“Why?” he cried. “You’re not going to like it!”

Look, when in Moundsville, eat like the Moundsvillagers, right? And I imagine they must flock in droves to a restaurant attached to a run-down motel with a shady accountant’s office in the back.

“This is going to be just like that Roadside Restaurant you hated,” Henry mumbled as we walked through the doors and were hit with a blast of 1960s wood paneling, coagulating gravy and geriatric disdain. But unlike the Roadside, where we were forced to order from a grease-encased menu, we instead got to push a tray through a grease-encased tableau of said menu, like taking a tour of an 85-year-old’s last meal request.

As we stood there holding our trays, every last townie looked up from their snot-gravied plates and if they weren’t all whispering “City folk!” to each other, then my knack at prejudging is really tarnished.

You better believe I tried their homemade p-nut butter pie.

And it actually was delicious, but it reminded me of when I used to give my German Shepherd a spoonful of peanut butter to disengage his barking ability before I would sneak out of the house in high school. I’m sure Henry enjoyed my pie-feasting silence.

The cafeteria offerings actually started out with fruit-suspended jello dishes. Come on, Young’s. Could you be any more cliche? I couldn’t decide if it was more hospital tray or 1967 block party. I even had the green one on my tray for a split second before coming to my senses.

I could practically see Henry’s ears smoking as his brain frantically tried to dissuade his stomach from choosing every single bowl of disgusting Old Person Side Dish. Pickled eggs, REALLY? You know there were beets floating around up in that display somewhere, too.

Like I’m one to talk for thinking that this BEAN SALAD would be a good idea. Oh my god, one bite and I thought it was going to spring forth in all its vinegar’d glory and kill me. I swapped it out with Henry’s cole slaw when he wasn’t looking, but that was just as dried-up as all the octogenarians dining around us.

Healthy stuff.

Their entree offerings were exactly as I had guessed, short of salisbury steak. Just a bunch of mystery meats lost beneath gravy pits of varying colors. However, they actually had a vegetable lasagna! Chooch was ahead of us and doing everything on his own because he’s apparently his own person, when the fuck did that happen? Oh wait, it’s always been like that. Apparently, the close proximity of so many vats of vomit models had him suffering the same recoiling gag reflex as his mother, so he opted for the vegetable lasagna too. I heard the old hair-netted broad ask him if he wanted sauce on it, and he had the good sense to shoot down that idea.

I, on the other hand, did not engage my smarts and said yes to the same question.

In return, I was handed a plate of vegetable lasagna smothered under a blanket of MEAT SAUCE, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Seriously, MEAT SAUCE?! On VEGETABLE LASAGNA? Look, I’m not one to send back food, but I had to make an exception with this. So after whispering tersely with Henry about how “I can’t eat this now! WHAT SHOULD I DO? YOU DO IT!!!!” I handed it back to the old lady and said I didn’t want any sauce at all.

“The marinara sauce is next to the meat sauce,” her youthful co-slopper pointed out, and, not having heard me tell the old broad I didn’t want any sauce after all, was just about to begin ladling a blood pool of tomato sauce onto my pure, virginal slab of vegetable lasagna when I yelled, “NO SAUCE!” I mean, when I was originally asked if I wanted sauce, I assumed it was a creamy sauce to match what was already on the lasagna, and I only said yes because that shit looked desiccated, I’m sorry.

God only knows how long it had been sitting in that vat, forced to commingle with the likes of chicken a la king and pepper steak. I’d be all withered, too.

But why would you want to put marinara sauce on a vegetable lasagna?!

I had to remind myself that we were in West Virginia, after all, and they probably don’t know any better.

This picture is too good not to use again. Why was Henry so angry? Oh god, the possibilities are endless. The fact that Chooch and I were acting like obnoxious tourists could have had a lot to do with it. Or the fact that we weren’t paying attention to the crap with which Chooch was filling his tray (like chocolate cake and a chocolate chip cookie and chocolate milk and chocolate chocolate). Or the fact that our lunch cost over $40, hahaha.

“I thought cafeterias were supposed to be for poor people?” I asked Henry, who is an authority on Poor People Things.

“Not when you’re charged for everything separately!” he growled. I don’t know why he was taking it out on us when his tray was the one filled with an individual hospital patient smorgasbord. I seriously think he took one of everything in the disgusting wet salad section, where everything was either pickled or buried under a relish helmet.

You’d think he would have been content—-this was a Babylon for blue collared gourmands!

I wonder if cafeterias remind Henry of THE SERVICE. I wonder if he ever had kitchen duty. I sense a potential Henry interview.

While my lasagna wasn’t anything to blog about, I enjoyed my time at Young’s. It reminded me of when I was little and would beg my mom to take me to Woolworth’s at the mall just so I could eat in the cafeteria. There’s something special about cafeteria pudding when you’re 4 years old. And pinching your mom’s fingers between her tray and yours.

THAT’S what I forgot to do to Henry.