Henry appreciation post! (Sort of!)

Look at those nimble fingers. I wonder if his mommy knows she birthed one crafty motherfucker. And I mean crafty less in the “slipping rufies” sense, and more so in the “dude can go to town with some rubber cement and a sewing kit” sense.

He’d fit right in at a stich n’ bitch party. He’d probably even bring the best baked goods.  He also can do some car stuff, electrical work, and once he made us a screen for the door and I was like, “How did you do that?” and he was all, “I have screencutting tools,” like I’m some ignorant bitch for not asking him if he could make a screen before having sex with him for the first time.

Yes, he can do lots of things, but the challenge is GETTING HIM TO ACTUALLY DO IT.

I”m pretty sure he imagines my face when he gets all agile with his Exacto.

Now that I can’t justify going to a pretty salon and having sweet-smelling hair products massaged into my scalp, Henry has become my hair stylist and he actually does a pretty efficient job, considering my hair is two colors and he has to work with a comb puckered between his lips. (And the gloves that come with the box of dye, which are so clearly made for women.)

He doesn’t do all the work on my pendants though! Here is what I do:

1. Pick out the prints that I want him to use.
2. Order the pendants
3. Whine every day the pendants don’t arrive
4. Once they come in, etermine which ones go in which frames (we have gold, silver, and copper and not every print looks right)
5. Hound him every fifteen minutes when he comes home to fucking start making them already
6. Sometimes I cut the prints out for him
7. Hover
8. Yell at him when 1 out of a batch of 10 doesn’t come out to my standards

But I’ve been making new pendants on my own now! They’re a much bigger size than the framed ones, so I’m able to use a lot of the prints that I couldn’t originally. I can do everything myself with these ones! Well, except for the part where I need a responsible adult to bake them in an oven.

“The Goldbricker.”

I can’t remember the last time my dining room table was a dining room table. Between functioning as a serial killer card sweatshop, a dumping ground for paintings because there is little vacancy left on my walls, and now a jewelry factory, we never eat at the table. When (if) we ever leave this shit hole, I’m not signing for anything that doesn’t have an extra room we can designate as Crafter’s Hell, because I know for certain that I’m tired of painting at the kitchen sink. And that way, maybe if things get too crazy, I can shut the door real tight and go on an acrylic coating huffing spree. (I actually just sprayed some of that shit and am feeling pretty green in the face right now. And it sounds like sheet metal is shuttering next to my ears.)

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Hay guess what Henry killed our Internet connection so I’m trying post from my busted Blackberry and I’m sort of panicking right now OMFG.

And at the same time, Chooch got pissed off while hanging out with Alisha, Janna and Blake (yes, he’s still awake, which is the result of baking the recipe for AWESOME PARENTING) and I had to deal with talking him off a ledge.

Oh my god, this night is going swimmingly.

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Here is a little known fact about me: I am very particular and territorial when it comes to things. Like, all things. Here is a story about that.

Back when Henry moved in with me, I think this was 2002 or some other ridiculously depressing long time ago, he decided to come home one day with a new cordless phone.

After he took it out of the bag and ran his hand along the box while going through the exhaustive list its merits, I very calmly (read: screaming with a blown top and smoking ears) asked him to return it.

“Why?” he asked dumbly, which is how he asks all of his questions.

“I’m sure this phone is a real diamond in the technological rough, but I was not consulted before this purchase, therefore I must calmly and maturely ask you to remove it from my house.”

Of course, Henry threw one of his tantrums and chucked a catalog at my face, demanding that I pick out one myself.

So I did.

And it was pink.

And it had “princess” in its model name.

And it was made by Disney.

And it practically incinerated the shit out of the box it came in, what with all the  scintillating it was made to do.

And it came programmed with a variety of classic Disney songs to use as ring tones.

I hated the shit out of it, but the fact that I was able to capture images like this one made it all worthwhile.

I win.

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I woke up Saturday feeling all sorts of socially anxious and testy. Nothing in particular happened, but I had a long week of potty-training and I think that combined with my usual stressors set off some sort of synaptical brush fire which desperately begged to be doused with wine. So I canceled all of my weekend plans and tried to shut off my brain.

Sunday morning, Henry suggested that I spend some time alone, since my biggest gripe is, “I NEVER GET ANY TIME ALONE, MOTHERFUCKER.” He whisked Chooch off and I did some shit on the computer, watched some embarrassing reality TV (seeing Hulk Hogan cry is even a little awkward for ME), and I modeled some clothes for the cats. Their stares were blank and peppered with undulating question marks.

I lasted three hours. No, two and a half. And then I was fidgeting and sick of being in the house and absolutely itching for something, anything, to do. Stewing in a mindless muck on the couch does not become me. Henry and Chooch were summoned home, and we went for a little Sunday drive thing.

We ended up in some country-ghetto park out near Ambridge, PA. All the roads had clumbs of weeds ripping through the cracked asphalt and I’m fairly certain it is THE PERFECT place to don a letterman jacket and rape a bitch and I kept getting little chills molesting my spine, up and down and all around.

We found an isolated pavilion that had a rusty, rainbow-painted swing set and a SEESAW which I swear to God I haven’t seen a see saw in fucking ten years. I begged Henry to ‘saw with me and as soon as he had me in the air, I mean THE VERY SECOND my feet lost their position on the earth, I was in hysterics and screamed loudly, “PUT ME DOWN PUT ME THE FUCK DOWN I’M GONNA DIE PUT ME THE FUCK DOWN I JUST PEED.”

There were several chained off, overgrown roads that were surrounded on both sides by dark woods nd practically calling out to us to uncover the murders that have happened out there. I kept voicing scenarios out loud, forcing Henry to constantly remind me that our three-year-old was with us but really it was because I was unnerving him.

I totally can’t remember the name of this sad park, but I would like to be having my birthday party there. My Simulated Murder Birthday Party. I guess that will be next year’s big fete. Oh boy.

I like the outdoors, but only for a few minutes because then wildlife things start making my nose itch and I thought I kept hearing a chainsaw firing up in the near distance. I mean, I let out a blood-curdling cry that would rival that of any Scream Queen’s because a chipmunk poked his nose out from the bottom of a collection of wildflowers we were walking next to. A CHIPMUNK, not Leatherface.

But Chooch, he would live among milkweed (Henry just taught me that!!#@!) and jagger bushes if we let him. He’s probably going to want to go camping at some point. I hate camping (I’ve never been camping, but I just know that I will hate it). So then Henry will be all, “Here son, I’ll take you camping and we can leave Mommy at home to bake bread and darn our socks” and I’ll be damned if they’re going to go someplace alone where the possibility that they’ll talk about me is VERY REAL. I will start thinking now of ways to sabotage their camping trips. Those fuckers.

Then we left and Henry bought me Gobstoppers, even though I wanted Jawbreakers but he was all, “I haven’t seen real Jawbreakers in stores in a long time” and I said, “Bitch, then you best walk your elderly ass into a movie theater, mother fucker” but he laughed because apparently he thought I was joking.

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Thank god I follow Craig Owens on Twitter, else I might not have known about the handful of pre-Warped dates they decided to schedule in several very lucky cities (and that he can still remember what his first girlfriend smells like, wtf Craig). I was prepared to be let down when I checked the dates, and I wasn’t surprised at all to see that Pittsburgh wasn’t getting any love. However, Columbus was on the list and it happened to fall on a Friday so tickets were snatched up on the ASAP. Originally, Alisha was going to accompany me, but due to a very sad family matter that had her flying back home to Arkansas last week, Henry became her fill-in.

And he was thrilled. THRILLED. And on a road trip with me clocking in at 6 hours round-trip, who wouldn’t be? (Don’t answer that.)

The drive started out rocky, last minute snafus had us leaving the house thirty minutes later than I would have liked. And then Henry bought shitty pretzels to snack on and everyone knows (or should) that pretzels rate a negative one on my road trip snackability chart. But at least I got to whine the entire time about how starved I was, which is at the top of Henry’s pet peeve list and always makes him snap, “You’re not STARVED! You might be HUNGRY, but you’re not STARVING. Let me put you in the desert for a week with no food and then you will know what it’s like to be starving.” To which I always remind him that, like every other spoiled teenage girl looking for a reason to suffer, I was anorexic for AT LEAST two weeks when I was 14 so I know plenty well what it feels like to starve.

Then Henry talked about stuff that I don’t care about, like his work and his days in the SERVICE, but I distracted myself with a highway mix consisting of Frank Turner, A Camp, Sights and Sounds, and This City Needs Guns. (And, not gonna lie, some old school Taking Back Sunday.)

We stopped in some rustic Ohio lake town a few miles outside of Columbus, in search of something more filling than pretzels. We settled on Subway, and I left Henry alone  to describe to the sandwich artist what I wanted while I tried to make it in and out of the bathroom unscathed. I was almost successful, except that my ring got snagged on my underwear and somehow that resulted in me performing the most retarded, uncoordinated, grand scale version of a Cats Cradle and I broke a slight sweat across my brow and wondered how noticeable it would be if I exited the bathroom with a swath of pink-hearted cotton dangling from my thumb like a pennant someone might wave after date raping a cheerleader.

You can stop holding your breath now because after I realized it would be more sensible to remove my ring and not my underwear, my confidence returned and I thought to myself, “I am not going to be bested by a fucking  steampunk beetle ring” and the next thing I knew, I had come out on the other side of the untangling process with little more than a bent leg on my beetle and somehow my lipstick was smeared. Unfortunately, the rush I experienced from winning that battle was negated when I realized that the sub Henry designed for me was little more than a mayo sandwich.

In Columbus, we were immediately met with traffic coming off the highway. I was OK with this because in our neighboring lane could be found a gang of aging bikers trying so hard to look tough when I just knew deep down they were aching to slip into a comfy pair of deck shoes. Each bike was radiating a different country song and it was just one of those things that provoked my inner giddiness and I completely lost control. I was laughing so hard that I was doubled over in my seat, tears streaming down my face, Henry ordering me to “knock it off.”

“They’re probably going to a country music concert, I bet that’s why there’s so much traffic,” Henry postulated because he knows everything. I asked him what he was using as evidence and he pointed up ahead. “There’s a woman holding a sign for tickets and she looks like a country music fan.”

It turned out to be a homeless woman, holding a sign for food. And besides, all the homeless people I’ve ever known have been into bluegrass and Appalachian murder ballads.

Meanwhile, we had made it onto another street and were still flanked by the bikers. “Oh please, can I say something to them?” I wheezed through peals of laughter. People in surrounding cars were starting to stare, and that only made me laugh harder and Henry grimace deeper.

“Say something like what?” Henry snapped. “They’re not even doing anything.” Here is where he began rubbing his temples.

“But they think they’re so hardcore, look at them! They’re so funny!” And here is where I began trying not to piss my pants. “How is this not funny to you?” At this point, I could barely speak, the hilarity was choking me, no lie. I wanted one of them so badly to crank the Seals and Croft.

“It’s apparently only funny to you younger generation assholes,” Henry muttered. Then he made a left hand turn from the center lane and pissed off a bunch of people, which only doubled my hysteria. And then when he went to pay the attendant of a parking lot, the attendant said he didn’t have change so Henry had to dig through his pockets for quarters and I’ll tell you, at this point I thought I was going to have to be hospitalized for laughter-induced rib-cracking. Ooooh boy, Henry was so pissed off at me, too.

We ended up walking toward the venue in the middle of a family. “Let’s pretend like we’re with these people,” I whispered loudly, “so it looks like we belong here.”

“Uh, I’m actually pretending like I’m not with YOU,” Henry answered, right before he tried to trick me into going the opposite direction. And in our adopted family was a group of little boys who were talking excitedly, and at one point I heard the words “Stanley Cup” and “Penguins.” Waiting to cross the street, I blatantly eavesdropped, which made Henry uncomfortable. When there was a pause in their conversation, I blurted out, “The Penguins are going to win.” It came out real snotty, too, I have no idea why. And in unison, they all started praising the Penguins too and Henry grabbed me by the elbow and scolded me for talking to small children. “That’s creepy!” he whispered.

“I’m talking to them about hockey, not trying to flash a tit,” I argued. Fucking hockey, man. Even when I’m about to see one of my favorite bands it’s on the forefront of my dumb mind.

The show was at the Basement, which is probably one of the smallest venues I’ve ever been to. This is what Chiodos had promised too — they wanted it as intimate as possible and that’s exactly what they got. It was a sold out show, so I was glad I bought tickets the day it was announced.

We sat at the bar and I immediately hated every person there. This was enhanced the more I drank until I was eventually shaking and Henry had to babysit me only because he’s too much of a pussy to throw a blow after I provoke dudes. (I almost always target jock-y bro-types when I drink.)  On this particular occasion, there were two assholes who had feet upon free of empty floor but chose to stand flush against the back of my bar stool. Just what I wanted, generic frat boy ornaments on my back. But it only got worse once they opened their mouths and never shut up. The smaller of the two had this horrible high-pitched voice that could have given him a great future at Hanna-Barbera and he was relentlessly trash-talking Pittsburgh and I was doing that thing that sometimes you see crazy people do in sanitariums where they laugh hysterically and maniacally but their eyes are screaming, “Look at me now you motherfucker, oh ho ho ho I’m so fucking pissed that I can’t stop laughing at how rewarding it’s going to be when I impale you with a fistful of broken glass and rip your voice box out through the shredded flesh wound” and several times I swiveled in my chair and we made eye contact and Henry was murmuring, “Fucking stop, let it go” because he was only in the Air Force so his fighting skills consist of the shove-and-run method.

And then the other bro was a veritable fount of music knowledge and I laughed disgustedly as he stood behind me, raping facts up the ass with a Nickleback poster. He said that Isles and Glaciers were made up of members of MxPx and some other guys too and I looked at Henry with my mouth agape and loudly asked, “Is he fucking retarded?” and I know that 99% of the people reading this are like, “OK who cares” BUT I DO. I was raging so hard, my heart thumping so angrily,  that it’s times like that when I begin to wonder if someone’s been slipping me unbeknownst steroid shakes.

This is why I try to abstain from drinking at shows.

The opening band, Miss May I, started around that time and those assholes found somewhere else to stand which is probably a good thing because they didn’t look like they were opposed to punching a girl in the face. (Which is surprising that this hasn’t happened yet.)

So Miss May I were boisterous and guttural, which is just what I needed right then. I liked them a lot a lot a lot and that’s only partially related to the fact that Henry hated them.

After them was my new favorite band, Your Best Friend. I knew their music beforehand and was very excited to see them live. They didn’t disappoint one bit. Even with a slightly slurred and sluggish attention span, I was captivated through the entire set. The next day, I immediately ordered their CD. Midwestern emo will always get Valentines from my heart.

I was also excited to see the Silent Years, who played next, because I have liked what I’ve heard from them in the past (this song, specifically). Unfortunately, like a lot of indie music  in general lately, they sounded good but just didn’t hold my attention. (I go through phases.) That could also have something to do with the fact that Craig was sitting five seats away from me at the bar.

My favorite member of Chiodos, drummer Derrick Frost, recently left the band, so it was somewhat sad not seeing him that night. Every other member walked past me at some point throughout the night and I would softly say, “Aw, yay.”

Eschewing the large stage and fancy lights did little to reduce the fullness of their sound; they were giants up there on that tiny stage and when they played “The Words ‘Best Friend’ Become Redefined” my tattoo didn’t ignite with blue flames and regenerate the dead parts of my heart like I had hoped, but it sure felt good to trace it and have a very important decision reaffirmed.

They were amazing as usual, and while I had mega sad-face when it was over, I was not sad to leave the Basement and the stench of 200 sweaty scene kids behind me. I feel lucky that I got to see them, and that I have a (somewhat) nice boyfriend who went with me. I was sad to not have Alisha there, but it was still nice to get to spend some quality time with the old man. Especially on the three hour drive home, when he was fighting to stay awake and I was too drunk to relieve him at the wheel, so I blasted some Dillinger Escape Plan.  Smarties!

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Oh dear Lord, I found this old post from Mother’s Day 2007 when I was looking for something and I haven’t publicly made a mockery of Henry in so long, like an entire month maybe, so excuse me while I indulge in a re-post.

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It had quickly become my dying wish, this one thing that I wanted last week. The desire for this favor was so great, like I could die from the sheer want of it all. The extremity of it had far surpassed my dream of starting a jump rope league, and was at least on par with the Robert Smith / Lydia Lunch personal journal conquest of 2001, where my insanity had reached such high summits that I was ready to sell my car to finance the purchase.  If I had to put it in terms that the rational populace might understand,  I might liken the obsession to dreams of aquiring a new house or the incessant need to check yourself for venereal diseases.

This obsession overtook each of my senses: a palpable vinegar pool of yearning swirling on my tongue; the sneering visage of an undulating Satan dangling my dire longing before my eyes; a needling Siren song of excruciating taunt engulfing my ears. And Henry was the only one who could make it go away.

When I initially presented him with my proposition on a Monday, Henry seemed perplexed, probably from his deep-seeded inherent fantasies surging forth. To camouflage his interest, he instead scoffed and rather quickly became sucked back into Food Network. Broaching the sensitive topic on Tuesday resulted in an equivocal “We’ll see,” which I’m truly talented at converting to the far affirmative side of the Erin Gets Her Way spectrum.

By that Wednesday, he was putty in my hands. It could have been over and done with in a mere two minutes, the butterfly finally in my net, but I had to push my luck as usual.

“Why don’t we take this outside for a second?”

When he reluctantly agreed, I pushed further.

“Across the street and by that tree.”

And the foot came down.

We didn’t talk for nearly an hour.

Using Mothers Day as leverage, I finally got what I wanted.

Hey, if you got the legs to rock it….

Notice the stark contrast between the ones where he was pushed out of his comfort zone and this next one, where he was clearly in his Pretty Girlie Sue Sue element and patiently waiting his turn to strike a pose on the catwalk, as Robert smiles down some moxie on him from the background.

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

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

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

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

That’s all on you.”

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

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Many moons ago, when I was a spry sixteen year old, I went to my neighbor Jessy’s house to color Easter eggs. Not knowing Jessy very well, I had to censor the ideas I had for my eggs. It’s never wise to draw pictures on the eggs with wax crayon depicting Jesus molesting young boys when you haven’t officially tested the waters surrounding your company. She may have been a Bible jockey – what did I know? So our eggs were your standard fare – brightly colored, some boasting our names and superlatives expressing the magnitude of our undeniable coolness.

As we marveled over our freshly colored eggs, Jessy shared with me a tradition from her childhood. She encouraged me to select my favorite egg from the batch and then told me to take it home, place it somewhere dark and dry, and eventually it would shrivel and become hard as a rock. I would be left with an unbreakable souvenir of that year’s Easter. She said her grandma did it every year, so I had a lot of confidence in her.

I went home and chose a porcelain container situated in the hutch in our dining room. Carefully nestling the egg inside the dark compartment, I gave it one last loving stroke for good measure and replaced the lid.

After an uncertain amount of time, my mom decided that she was going to clean. Typically, when my mom said she was going to clean, it entailed clutter being kicked and shoved under furniture and into drawers that already were resisting closure [note: this is where I learned my housekeeping ethics]. But on that day, something had possessed her to go all out and dust the dining room.

All was calm and quiet in the house; the muted din of cartoons mingled with a cacophony of chirping birds from outside. Suddenly, my mother’s piercing shriek could be heard ’round the neighborhood. I ran into the dining room just in time to witness my former pre-birth vessel, frozen in terror, holding the lid to the porcelain jar while an army of maggots swarmed around it, undulating and looking generally disgusting.

I was in trouble.

Since then, I’ve learned that there’s an entire process that needs to be followed in order to preserve Easter eggs. And it’s too much work for me.

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Four years ago, in an effort to really immerse ourselves in the Easter spirit, Henry and I invited Alisha over to indulge in some adult egg coloring. And by adult, I mean to say none of this wholesome “I Love God” egg-dyeing bullshit. My eggs were billboards for unsavory epithets like Fucknoodle and Dickshitter. This was the way eggs were meant to be. This was art.

I had huge dreams of making a Porno Series, in which we would enhance each egg with paint so that they would depict naked nymphos, ready to get it on. I had this highly ambitious endeavor of creating an entire storyboard from it which would propel me into stardom.

I could sense the fear that Henry was emanating. It smelt of nachos and the Service, circa 1984.

“Um, so what exactly is this going to entail, this porno egg thing?” Henry questioned as he nervously rubbed his arms. I’m afraid that he was picturing some grandiose scene of us shoving freshly-colored eggs into his ass while paying spectators watched from behind a red-velvet rope. So paranoid. But that would make for some classy performance art.

Everything was progressing normally until Alisha plopped an egg into a mug of dye and ogled over the unusual sludgy color. Henry, always needing to stick his nose into everything, came over to inspect it as well.

I haven’t dyed eggs probably since the previous story unfolded, so I assumed that maybe Paas was trying to be all hip by not discriminating against colors and they were maybe slowly introducing ethnic shades into their color line. Personally, I thought it was a huge leap forward for the future of egg-coloring.

Alisha swished and swirled her egg around in the brown dye a few more times before announcing that nothing was happening. That was when we realized it was my coffee. It took three of us to come to this conclusion. College has made a huge impact on me so far!

The eggs turned out splendidly, especially my blue and yellow variation, but unfortunately the eggs in my Porno Series did not come out as expected. The … male genitalia that I drew with tongue-protruding concentration and accuracy dried to resemble a smiley. I remembered that we had glitter egg paint, so I demanded that Henry drop trou and model for me as I attempted to paint over the failed weener. He refused and opted instead to Google images for me. Because I’m Amish.

The result was still terrible and looked more like an elephant. Much respect for Michelangelo. However, the boobs I painted on the female egg came out perky and voluptuous, rivaling any silicone-enhanced pair crafted by the hands of a Beverly Hills surgeon. Well, almost.

And I made a very special, Henrydandy egg that will surely be cherished by a certain someone for years to come.

[Henry used to wear a bandanna and have long hair, FYI. (Not FTW.)]

There was no hiding of eggs in dark, dry places yesterday after Alisha and I painstakingly turned the ordinary stark shells into glorious masterpieces. So this Easter, while some people were in church learning about the Resurrection of Christ, I was learning that coffee does not adhere to eggs and that I shouldn’t go into business painting weeners.

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I’m hoping that tomorrow night, when I try my hand at egg-dyeing once again with Alisha, it will be so much fun that Jesus will rise a day early to dunk his junk in some green Paas. I mean, egg. To dunk his EGG. Oh, and Blake will be here too, so maybe, if all goes well, the night will veer into  STD Cookies: Ovum Edition.

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Thoughts are being gathered over here at 3021 Pioneer, so have an oldie (but probably not really goodie) for today. Originally written August 13th, 2007, and apparently on that day I felt compelled to call Chooch by his actual name.

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I’m not sure Henry’s and my relationship was much stronger the last time we were there , but in an attempt to recapture some of the magic we painted smiles upon our faces and stuffed the child into the car and headed out to the Living Treasures Animal Park. It’s about an hour drive from Pittsburgh, and we managed to arrive without a single episode to cause me to stare out the window in protruding-lipped angst. A good sign.

Of course, with Riley being the wild man that he is, it wasn’t exactly the casual hand-holding stroll beneath Victorian lace parasols in Kensington Park, but more like running a relay race in an attempt to chase around your child in near-90 degree heat, trying to make sure he doesn’t end up leaving with another family, shoveling rogue rooster poop into his mouth, or falling into the duck pond. When you’re drenched in clammy-handed sweat there’s no way do you want to be holding the hand of your partner who just got done feeding a cow and the entire three-ring fly circus he’s hosting upon his back.

For the most part, it was what you would imagine from a small zoo.

Animals shitting, lions sleeping with their backs toward you, asshole kids cutting in front of you while their asshole parents talk on their asshole cell phones like the asshole Ray-Banned yuppies they are. And all my child cared about was this one fucking duck over in a gazebo and finally I was like, “I didn’t just spend $20 for you to sit here and throw shit at a duck when we could have driven five miles from home and done this shit for free so now you’re going to come with me and look at a monkey and fucking like it” and then he melted down into a full-blown display of histrionic fireworks, complete with real, plump tears, and it was a nice little glimpse of the next eighteen years of my life. (And also the last 27 of my own, I guess I should add.)

I splurged on the large bag of feed and of course, with the exit in our sight, half of the bag still remained. Not wanting to waste it, I spent some extra time with the dromedary camels. Henry kept yelling at me to keep my hand flat, and I was getting angry. It was flat! I’m quite capable of reading signs, I’m in college, remember?

So I’m standing there, grimacing and dry heaving over the thick and sticky saliva being lacquered onto my hand, when suddenly the one camel started to inhale my entire palm into its large vacuum of a mouth. I was so horrified that I actually choked on my scream. I was wrist-deep in this motherfucker’s jaws and it was starting to apply pressure with its flat teeth. I tried to yank myself back out, but the camel clamped down harder.

Hysteria renders it impossible for me to relay every detail, but I’m fairly sure I roared something to the effect of, “Get it the fuck OFF OF ME!“

You know the situation has reached emergency status when Henry forgoes the eye-rolling and nearly drops our child to come to my aid. I had to squint to see it, but I do believe I detected a trace of panic filling in the lines of Henry’s weathered face. But by this point, I was losing consciousness, so what do I know.

Great, soon I’ll be attending tea parties on a cloud with Steve Irwin, I thought pitifully.

Luckily, Henry used his big manly muscles to rip out my arm with force, postponing my tete-a-tete with the Crocodile Hunter.

It was the closest we came to hand-holding all day. Aw, thanks camel.

I was afraid to look at what mangled flesh and bone remained. I held it up, with my non camel-molested hand wrapped around it, stroking it lovingly and swearing to never place it in such compromising situations again. When I finally peeked at it, there were red splotches here and there, presumably broken blood vessels, and my one fingernail was black underneath.

I shoved my camel-battered hand in Henry’s face and screamed, “Look at what that asshole has done! He’s murdered my hand!” Henry seemed alarmed at the blackness of my nail and urged me to show it to one of the staff members. I inwardly gloated at the fact that the son of a bitch actually gave a shit, waited a bit for his concern to balloon into hospital bill horror, and then admitted that it was really just paint souvenirs from my weekend of furious and maniacal art therapy.

Apparently, by ‘flat,’ what the signs really meant is “Don’t feed these fuckers, else you’ll be devoured up to your elbow until you’re fisting this Satan-spawned beast’s hay-stuffed colon. And if, by chance, you’re still conscious when that happens, grope around a bit and see if you can find my wedding band.  – The Handless Management.”

All of the fond memories I harbored of riding camels in Morocco have flown out the window. Ahoy, Aversion Island.

And thus, the tone of the day was set. We went to lunch after we left the farm of maim, where we ate to the tune of my whines. “It’s growing worse by the minute!” I’d sob. Henry would make exaggerated efforts to lovingly squeeze my hand from across the table; I’d scream out in pain.

Feigning concern, he would ask, “Oh, was that your camel hand?”

I really wished he would stop calling it that because it made me feel like I was wearing an ill-fitting glove.

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Since last weekend was all about cucpakes and game night, I find it apropos to repost an old LiveJournal post about the same subjects. And hopefully sometime Capn’ Cusspants will let Mommy have a fucking minute to sit down and write about the recent game night. If not, Doctor Nyquil might have to make an appearance. (KIDDING.)

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Originally posted January 21, 2007

 Bathing in a tub of warmed pistachio pudding with buoyant sponge caked-rubber duckies.

Traipsing through a field of peanut butter-covered bubble wrap while Robert (or Elliott) Smith warbles love songs down golden rays of sunlight while perched on a nearby cloud.

Swimming in a chambord pie with lesbian mermaids.

These are the sensations I imagined would wash over me while I tackled the cupcakes last week. I did not feel any of these things. Instead, I felt tired, bored, agitated. All the things I normally feel when spending time with Henry.

First, he quickly talked me out of the “from scratch” mindset and set me free in the baking aisle of Giant Eagle, where I bought three boxes of cake mix and decorative thingies and neon food coloring. There was so much more I wanted to buy but I don’t know where to go to get the good baking stuff. I wanted to encrust my cakes with edible diamonds and sugared seaweed, but time was fleeting.

My cupcake-baking enthusiasm quickly waned as I struggled to mix the batter, but interest was regained when Henry took the blending-reins and set me free with a kitchen-full of ingredients to plop into each pocket. He lingered close-by, though, to make sure that everything I used was edible. Just because I had hoped to fill the innards with mud, grass, thumb tacks and soiled baby wipes, I guess. Henry was disgusted and even remarked that I have the audacity to wonder why I can’t keep friends. And here I thought it was because of my wicked mood swings and inability to trust!

Here is what I learned:

• Cheerios shrivel and get very hard when baked
• Fruit snacks don’t melt; they still stick to your teeth even after being baked into batter
• Fistfuls of marshmallows should not be allowed inside a cupcake because then Henry has to use a knife to cut the finished product out of the pan. And then your guests think that one was nibbled on by your cats. And then you feel like shit because people think your house is unsanitary and they start holding cupcakes up to the light to inspect further.
  
• Maraschino cherry sauce sinks and congeals at the bottom for a bloody good-looking finished product
• Janna will eat her weight in cupcakes flavored with blueberry preserves, and won’t even notice that a well-concealed olive is awaiting her beneath a cap of green icing
• Chopped dates blend into cake batter and come out the other end of the baking process undetected. Seriously, who ate the one with the dates? No one knows
• When Henry urges me to only fill each baking cup halfway, I should listen

The next morning, Henry and I stood in the kitchen staring at two dozen un-iced cupcakes. We marveled over their non-uniformity and I grabbed the next box of mix.

“Whoa! Oh no. You are not making anymore. Are we looking at the same cupcakes here? You got two dozen disgusting cupcakes sitting here and let me tell you something: once your little friends find out what’s in them, ain’t no one going to be eating them. We don’t need any more cupcakes going to waste.”

I was enraged, yet relieved. Baking is tiring business, you guys. It’s not fun like it looks like on TV. I couldn’t even read the directions on my own. I tried, but words blended together and it started to look like a word problem which angered me because numbers just don’t belong in sentences with words because it makes my brain seize up a little. But I ate a lot (a lot) of batter and felt like it might have been my last day on earth.

So instead of boarding the baking train, we (read: Henry) whipped up some butter cream icing which was then separated into several bowls so I could get all Picasso with my food coloring.

“Just put like, two drops in,” Henry advised as I meat-fisted the small vial and sent at least fifteen droplets splattering into the icing.

We made purple (regular flavored), pink (amaretto), lime (almond), blue (marshmallow) and then I got bored and ditched Henry. He used this quiet time to concoct his own icing: bright green flavored with a hint of red pepper, which left a pleasant warmth in the mouth. It was my favorite, but none of the game night attendees noticed and had to be told what was happening. Sometimes I wonder if Janna’s mommy has to accompany her to the potty since Janna seems to need dialogue added to her every action.

“Now you’re passing a corn-studded turd through your anus. Here it comes! Plunk! That was the sound of it dropping into the toilet water! Now wipe yourself good, Janna. Front to back!”

Honestly. She probably didn’t notice the olive because I wasn’t giving her a play-by-play.

After I finished slathering my disfigured cupcakes, it was finally time to decorate them! Except that I didn’t give a shit anymore! I half-heartedly dusted each one with sprinkles and plopped a cherry on some of them. I was kind of over it. I mustered enough energy to impale two of them with toothpicks in order to create a two-story cupcake shanty.

It’s a shame really, because I had big plans of desecrating each iced dome with obscenities and unmentionables and maybe even using a piping bag to scrawl out some of Janna’s dirty secrets, but my belly ached from the fingerfuls of icing I had scooped out–behind Henry’s back–and jammed into the back of my throat like an orphan eating porridge. (I’ve been obsessed with porridge all weekend.)

I guess baking wasn’t the worst thing for me to find out I don’t mesh with. It could have been something dangerous, like knife-fighting. (Which isn’t to say that’s not a hobby I’ve flirted with in my head.)

For some reason, my guests actually ate all but five or six, forcing Henry to eat his words. There were several murmurings of “What is that sticking to my tooth?” but I really think that Henry’s delicious icing (ugh) overpowered my misuse of creative baking license.

Granted, two of my guests were stoned, but hey–I’ll take it.

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“Daddy’s home!” Chooch cried from the window yesterday. I looked out and sure enough, there was Henry, parked across the street in the lot. The driver’s side window was cracked open, and he appeared to be talking on the phone. He’ll do that sometimes, hide in the quiet sanctity of the car while on the phone in lieu of walking into the Killing Fields, aka Home.

I opened the window for Chooch to protrude his cantaloped head, at which time he began hollering, “Daddy! Daddy’s a dumbass!” causing entire voleries of birds to fly away in horror. Because I’m five-years-old, this seemed like a fun way to waste time, so I joined him. Along with the heckling, I brought to the table an impressive scale of operatic screams. And then Chooch outshone me by screeching, “MAGGOTS MICHAEL!” over and over. In addition to Henry’s, we caused quite a few people to whip their heads in our direction.

This went on without relent for a good fifteen minutes, and every time Henry would turn his face toward us, we would laugh even harder.

“I bet Daddy is SO PISSED,” I laughed, elbowing Chooch.

“Don’t elbow me! I can’t like that,” Chooch whined, adding some devil eyes for impact. (Chooch never says he doesn’t like something, it’s always that he CAN’T like it.

)

Then he threw his pacifier out the window, which caused him to cheer and clap before realizing the severity of the situation. I assured him that Henry would be off the phone anytime now and that he would get it, because Mommy didn’t have her shoes on.

But then another ten minutes passed and I’m starting to think, “What the fuck, who is he talking to out there?

” First I’m annoyed, but then all kinds of hypothetical horrors begin to cross my mind, all of which involve his ex-wife. Especially since he kept making hostile hand movements and he only does that while on the phone with her. (Probably me too, but obviously I can’t witness that.)  Meanwhile, Chooch had remembered that he tossed his paci out for the birds and commanded that  I go and get  my shoes on.

I made a big production of going outside for paci-retrieval, picking it up and thrusting it in the direction of Henry, silently miming, “Fuck you, I saved the day for Chooch, you worthless father!” There I was, standing in the front yard, wearing green capri sweatpants, green and white striped knee-highs and green tennis shoes. And a shirt, don’t worry, my boobs were clothed. I’m standing out there, looking like the tallest Leprechaun, commemorating my annoyance for Henry with a puppet show of universal lewd gesticulations and bellowing “GET OFF THE PHONE, DOUCHEBARREL!”

Ew, I was so pissed that he was just SITTING THERE on the phone that whole time, when he should have been in the house spending what little free time he has with Chooch. And making me lunch.

I called him, and of course he didn’t click over. I thought to myself that he had better be on the phone with a jeweler ironing out details of a blood-infused diamond ring if he wanted his balls to remain un-thumbtacked.

I was about to go outside and storm the car, grab my battering ram on the way out, but I knew there was no way Chooch would stay in the house and wait for me. You got lucky this time Henry, I thought with a scowl.

And then, I don’t know what happened. Something must have distracted me because Chooch and I left our post at the window and moved on to other things. Which probably means iCarly was on.

Somewhere around twenty minutes later, Chooch yelled, “Daddy!” again. I looked out in time to see Henry pulling out of the lot. I figured he was going to pull into the driveway, probably he brought some cases of beverage home from work for us. So Chooch and I are smashed against the door, jumping around like assholes and shouting, when Henry drove right past the house.

Chooch immediately burst into tears. But I made eye contact just long enough to realize that it wasn’t Henry after all. We had spent the better part of an hour harrassing a perfect stranger. A perfect stranger who will probably never again park across from my house to engage in a phone conversation.

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This is my friend Alisha and me at Henry’s FORTIETH birthday pity party in 2005. I don’t know why my expression screams post-rubber cement sniffing session, but I am wearing a purple bowtie and that’s all that really matters.

Alisha and I hadn’t been in touch for a few years, but we reconnected recently and went out to lunch last Sunday. It was awesome to have a little bit of familiarity after all the changes that have going down lately. I guess I expected some tension, but there was none to be found. On my end, at least. After I forced a high-five upon her, we walked to the Elbow Room where we had super greasy grilled cheeses (the best kind) and reminisced about all the ridiculous memories of 2005, like when I talked her into going roller skating with me.

It’s a wonder that she ever came back for more, to be honest.

In other Twitter news, now that Henry is working this second job I talked him into signing up for Twitter so that my savory tweets can breathe some will to live into his weary soul. Or utterly disgust and annoy him, it’s hard to tell with him sometimes. He left it up to me, which is like giving a thief your PIN, and by Friday afternoon our little Henry became the proud owner of his very own Twitter account: A Woodhick. I even went ahead and added John McCain as his very first friend! I figured it’s the least I could do since it’s been a whole three years since I placed a personal ad for him.

He was not happy with the name I gave him. It’s a funny little story, really. (No, it’s not really.) But one time last year, we were watching some local show called  Dave and Dave’s Excellent Adventures and on that particular episode, they were at some lumber thingie. I don’t really fucking remember, but I know that they were talking to some jackass who worked there and that jackass was all, “Yeah, we’re known as woodhicks.” And I started laughing because before I knew Henry, he was a delivery driver for a lumber yard. So in my most obnoxious manner, I was all, “Haha, Henry was a woodhick.” And of course, Henry had to bring logic to the table and remind me that he never actually cut down trees. But it was too late. The image of him as a woodhick, wearing a trucker cap with “WOODHICK” emblazoned on it in hot pink threading, was already seared into my mind. In some variations of this vision, he’s wearing suspenders.

I decided to change his name in my phone from “Asshole” to “Woodhick” but was not pleased when I realized this would knock him all the way down to the end of the list. So he’s in there as “A Woodhick.” (And to further anger him, I put “Gayblade Juice” as his company instead of Everfresh Juice, and his title is “Head Fag”.) God help me if I die when I’m with someone and they can’t find Henry’s number in my phone. I thnk about that all the time. I should really do that ICE thing.

Speaking of phone book entries, I was going through Henry’s contacts one day (he was sitting next to me, chill! I’m not one of those crazies who sneak peeks at their partners call logs/text messages when they’re sleeping. That’s creepy, even for me) and was a little disappointed to see that there were so many people listed above me. So I changed my name to Adrian to ensure I’d be #1. In fact, I think I should do this for all of my friends’ cell phones.

This concludes an intimate glimpse into my delightful relationship with Henri the Woodhick.

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Last night was relatively calm for the most part.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Something wonderful and terrible happened all at once: Henry got a second job. He starts today, at 3 and won’t be home until 11. This is awesome because hello, we need the money; but it’s tragic because it means I have to cook dinner for Chooch and myself EVERY NIGHT NOW.

I don’t know how to cook, remember? Not only that, but I don’t LIKE to cook.

I told Henry, “Son, you better do like all those good working mommies do and start freezing some shit.” So last night, he toiled away over a big cauldron and before I knew it, the fridge was stocked with small plastic containers of soup. “This should get you through until at least Wednesday,” he said, and I could tell by the way his voice was strained that he’s worried about this too, like he’s going to come home one night and find Chooch and I in an emaciated heap by the corner, being pissed on by cats mistaking us for rugs.

“I’ll freeze some spaghetti sauce, too,” he said on second thought, coming back from whatever faraway vision of horror he was screening.

When he came home from his first job today, he was in the kitchen stocking up the salad bowl for me. I came up behind him, gave him a desperate hug and whispered, “It’s like, the end of an era.”

“WHAT era?” he asked. The era of home-cooked meals, Henry.

The era of not having to touch the stove, ever.

Oh my shit, I’m going to miss that fucking man.

I can make cheese sandwiches (not grilled cheeses, though; that’s one step up from the three-year-old skill level I currently maintain), sometimes pasta but that’s pretty inconsistent, mac n cheese but Henry worries about the nutritional value when I get “creative” with it, and scrambled eggs but Henry worries that I will poison Chooch. I feel like there’s something else I can make but I can’t think.

Basically:

1. anything that can be cooked in the microwave
2. anything that can be toasted
3. anything that is ready to serve straight from a box
4. anything that doesn’t require SLICING
5. take out, though I’ve been known to fuck that up too on occasion

So, what I’m asking is for good, nutritionous and EASY (read: Erin-proof) recipes that I can confidently prepare for Chooch and myself. I don’t eat meat so I don’t know how to cook that shit. Please help.

And if anyone local feels like showing up on my doorstep with a crock pot full of vegetables, hope, and a grandmother’s love, I might be inclined to invite you in.

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Hello. It took me TWO HOURS to copy and paste that last fucking post.

Apparently, I’m not allowed to edit it, but I should just be thankful that WordPress allowed  me to publish it AT ALL considering it completely devoured my last attempt, which was actually formatted correctly, and left no evidence that it was ever posted.

So I apologize for the pisspoor, hard to read formatting, and I apologize to my subscribers for basically getting spammed by me today.

I’m really fucking over this whole blog thing, motherfuck.

I need to go jab myself with something sharp.

L8r.

EDIT: I love u Henry. Marry me.

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