Feb 182016
 

Henry and I have many recurring arguments, usually over his unwillingness to put the seat down or let touring bands crash at our place.

(He at least picks up his socks now, either that or he just stopped wearing them since I retaliated by throwing away every sock I found of his on the floor, and now he just doesn’t have any left.)

The other night, we live-acted another episode of The Things We Fight About Most: Season 15, Episode “Henry Eats An Orange Again.”

We were standing in the kitchen together, peacefully co-existing, when it happened. The initial SQUIRT SMOOSH SMACK SLURP of his teeth and tongue tag-teaming in a juicy mastication match, wet nectar spraying through the air like a carefully choreographed money shot.

I’ve never felt more uncomfortable around someone eating a piece of fruit; it feels like walking in on your parents fucking. This should be done in private or at least not until others in the house are provided a pair of ear plugs. He sounds like he’s performing oral sex in citrus porn EVERY TIME HE EATS ORANGES. Must be how some of you feel when you hear the word MOIST or OINTMENT, like nails on a chalkboard that’s also being used to administer a pelvic exam on you.

Just imagine his beard glistening with post-coital orange jizz interwoven between those grizzled bristles.

I just can’t stand it.

And every time, it comes as a shock to him, being called out for being the sleaziest Sunkist gourmand this side of the fucking Green Door.

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UGHHHH go fuck yourself with that orange! YOU ALREADY SOUND LIKE YOU ARE.

Jul 172011
 

This was supposed to be an ongoing series, but it’s taken me a whole year to make the second one. Sounds about right.

Hey, in other news, those of you who requested a People of Brookline postcard might actually get one soon! Henry is off all week so he can do fatherly things with the kid during the day and maybe I might actually get a chance to do something, anything.

Mar 232011
 

Henry is sick now. And when Henry is sick, it’s all, “Just leave me alone! I need to rest!” and then he barricades himself in the bedroom and leaves the rest of us incompetent beings to stumble repeatedly into the wall like dying wind-up toys.

He came home from work early yesterday with preconceived notions of “resting,” but too bad I was having major blog issues (it was basically BROKEN-DOWN).

“Get down here and fix this!” I yelled up to him. “You can rest when you’re done.” And I said it in such a way that sent ice-cold claws grating down his back, so even though he acted all haughty when he stomped down the stairs, it was obvious that his manhood was cowering underneath his feverish flesh.

It’s sort of better now, back to its original jacked-up state, at least. My blog, not Henry. Last I bothered to check, he was still a suffering mess of chills and aches.

He better get stoked though, because tonight is the Dance Gavin Dance show, which I had scheduled off work for two months in advance. He was nasally complaining about this yesterday, because not only is he sick, but he absolutely abhors Dance Gavin Dance.

“This is so unfair how you do this to me,” he bitched in a way that immediately lopped two inches off his dick measurement.

“I’m going to wait until you’re sick and then make you go see someone you hate.”

“Go ahead,” I taunted, knowing this threat will never come to fruition because it involves spending money which Henry doesn’t enjoy doing unless it’s on bottles of Mountain Dew, computer parts and socks.

“Katy Perry!” he yelled, practically clapping his hands in delight. “I’m making you go see Katy Perry.

Front row seats.”

I couldn’t stop laughing at the ridiculousness of this. Erin Rachelle Kelly at a Katy Perry “concert.”

“That’s fine,” I played along. “I’ll start a fight and get kicked out.”

“Ooh, Katy Perry and PINK!” Henry went on, dreaming up some stupid scenario in his stupid head. “A night of positivity.” (I’m constantly ranting about how I hate Pink because she’s so fucking positive. Just what women need, more anthems.)

My luck, they’ll probably be on tour together this summer and Henry will win tickets from whatever pathetic radio station he guiltily listens to when I’m not in the car with him.

Jul 042010
 

Remember that old series “Goofus and Gallant” that was in that kid’s magazine, Highlights? I was thinking about it this morning and how much Henry and I are like the Goofus and Gallant of the 21st century. So I’m reinventing the series.

Here’s the first one:

goofusgallant

My hair is actually darker than that. But everything else is TRUTHFUL, right down to Henry’s empty box of hemorrhoid paste.

No wait, I lied! Our garbage can is blue.

[A Note: The last time I read Highlights was the summer of 2004. I had taken my grandma to her doctor appointment and as we sat in the waiting room together, I took great pleasure in reacquainting myself the aforementioned Goofus and Gallant, and also the Timbertoes, whom I loved!

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Guys, they were a family made from TIMBER. After getting completely cocky from finding all the objects in the Hidden Picture thing, I began reading a page of riddles and jokes. There was one joke that I totally did NOT get (and can’t remember, so don’t even!), and had to actually ask my grandma to explain it to me.

One of the many millions of times she’s mumbled, “Oh honestly, Erin.

“]

Apr 232010
 

On the way home from work tonight, Henry and I talked about this nutcase who stabbed his wife to death because she was angry with him for staying up to watch the Penguins game last night, triple overtime and all.

“It would be the reverse in our house,” I laughed.

“Yeah, well, I’m sure there’s more to the story. She was probably a NAG and NAGGED him for the last time,” Henry said with great enunciation, taking his eyes off the road to glare at me.

“Oh, please,” I sneered. “If anyone is going to be doing any killing, it’s me.”

“But the difference,” Henry explained, “is that you’d never know I was coming. You, on the other hand, would probably trip and fall before you even left the kitchen with the knife.”

Upon further thought, Henry added, “No, you probably wouldn’t even be able to find the weapon you wanted to use, and would end up having to ask me.”

Oh, you just turned this into a competition, Douchebag Henry.

Jul 252009
 

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.

Feb 202009
 

Last night was relatively calm for the most part.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

Sep 202008
 

“I dreamt about serial killers today when I was taking a nap,” Henry said as we got ready for bed last night. He started to elaborate, but I cut him off.

“Oh, I had the WORST dream last night.

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I was on vacation. I think it was supposed to be Romania, but there were ice caps everywhere, so I think in my dream Romania had relocated to the Arctic Circle.

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It was so beautiful, there were rainbows everywhere—“

Henry snorted. “Rainbows? And this was a nightmare?”

Ignoring him, I continued. “I was on a bus with this guy Jared that I haven’t even thought about since high school, and the road we were on was flush with all this water, I think it was an ocean?

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” I could sense Henry holding back laughter next to me.  “And the bus driver was driving erratically and I was so afraid we were going to careen over the road and into the water—“

“But there were rainbows,” Henry reminded me, trying not to laugh.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t funny! It was a fucking scary dream. Fucking forget about the rainbows. And I remember–“

“Rainbows.”

At this point, I’m envisioning some barbed wire pulled taut around Henry’s nads, but I forge ahead with my traumatic tale.

“– in my dream, trying to find my phone so I could tweet about it, but I was distracted—“

“Probaby because of the rainbows,” Henry guessed, and started laughing into the pillow.

I never finished telling him about my dream.

Jul 202008
 

At Lowe’s on the current. Henry wanted Chooch and me to stay in the car so he could just run in and buy a padlock for work. First Chooch started crying so Henry reluctantly unstrapped him and took him out of the car. Then I was like, "Me too" and boy was Henry ever frustrated.

In the lock aisle, I suggested Henry purchase a delightful lime green lock with an alpha passcode, which he would then naturally choose "tuna" as the secret word and then proceed to scream real loud.

But instead he chose to ignore me and spent several painful minutes pursing his moustachioed lips while perusing the selection with constipating seriousness. I made some comment coated with teenaged attitude about all locks being the same, to which Henry angrily responded with a boring lesson on the varying sizes of padlocks and what it all means.

Meanwhile, Chooch was running off with thieved merchandise from shelves and I was bitching about how boring it is at Lowe’s. "This is why I wanted both of you to stay in the car!" Henry barked.

Then some dude with a limp, a protruding lip, and the general demeanor of a kid who spent his childhood making bombs and having no friends, came over and attempted to make two keys for Henry’s golden padlock of choice, but failed because he was too busy staring at my boobs and plotting the demise of our Nation to find the key code on the package. Not sure if there’s any correlation there.

On our way out, an elderly Lowe’s employee with icy blue eyes said "thank you" but I thought she said "Bury a deer."

Apr 252008
 

When Chooch was around four months old, I accidentally sliced skin while trimming his nails. There was blood, there was tears, and there was a split second when I realized this was my chance to eschew the term ‘boo boo’ from our household lexicon. It’s just one of those babyish words that I hate.  "Oh no, you got a Borden! You got a little Lizzie Borden on your finger, poor baby!"

Unfortunately, Chooch hasn’t had many spills resulting in any visible marring of the flesh (fortunately, I mean! Fortunately!), so the cute and fluffy term never had a chance to stick.

But apparently last night, Father of the Year allowed Chooch to fall on the sidewalk and scrape his knee. Now, I was at work when this happened, but to further plow Henry’s good name straight into a landfill of shit, I like to imagine that when it happened, he was too busy slurping dented cans of Schlitz and thumbing through the Yellow Pages looking for bait shops and hookers while Chooch wandered around in a stupor of neglect, diaper hanging open on one hip and poop crusted on his hands.

This morning, we were sitting on the couch and I noticed his little scrape on the knee. He saw me looking at it and said, "Boo boo!" Goddammit! No! Every time he said it, I quickly corrected him. "Yeah, you got a Borden! Ouchie!" I can just hear Henry in my head, teaching him that it’s a booboo. "Oh no buddy, you got a BOO BOO! Now let’s go inside and I’ll give you your BINKY and we’ll watch BARNEY and sing HANNAH MONTANA songs!" So I pointed to the scrape again and said, "Happy birthday, Chooch. That was Daddy’s gift to you."

Mar 222008
 

We’re at Home Depot and Henry is trying to teach me about light bulbs.

I’m not listening so essentially he’s talking to himself because trust me, Chooch could give a shit.

This place is boring and the sawdust fumes are giving me a headache.

Mar 172008
 

When he asks me to be more specific about the obvious.

"Henry, where are my keys?" I have two keys: house and car. They’re bound together in holy matrimony by the power of one keychain.

"The keys to….?"

"The titanium vault where we keep all the Nazi bodies and velvet satchels of rubies. The car, you fucking asshole."


When he’s vague when the question warrants specifics.

 

"What are you making?"

"Dinner."

"But what is it?"

"Food."

Feb 182008
 

When I notice I have a missed call from you, and I text you to see wtf you wanted, do not reply with "accident" unless you’re in the back of an ambulance. Because my heart is going to start performing palpitation gymnastics when I see that word, and when I find out you meant, "I called you by accident" and not "Hello, I had an automobile accident and am currently entangled in metal carnage" I’m going to want to take you from "accident" to "funeral" with one swift kick.

Got that, Henry?

(I can’t decide if I was more worried about Henry’s well being or the possibility that he totaled my mom’s car, which he was driving.)

Jan 032008
 

When I came home from work yesterday, I was telling Henry how I taught Kim to say ‘two thousand double quad’ (she won’t say it).

"Is that even right?" he asked. "I mean, couldn’t that actually mean 2044?"

"No!" I cried, blood rising to my face. "Four doubled is eight! Double quad!"

But he kept going on, analyzing it from every angle. "I knew there’d be one motherfucker in the crowd who had to question it…." I muttered in defeat.

"And I’m that motherfucker, yay!" Henry cheered, before leaving for work.