I didn’t want to wait until #mcm (MAN CRUSH MONDAY) to post this, so let’s pretend like today is #fgf (FAVORITE GUY FRIDAY).

When I first started dating Henry, I was 21 and he was 35. A LOT of people were like, “Ha-ha, say goodbye to your life. Have fun listening to country music and drinking IC Light.” Because that’s what all 35-year-old men do? And I guess I was a little worried at first, because I loved road-tripping for concerts back then. My friend Wonka and I would drive all over to see our favorite band at the time, Cold. In the first few months we were together, Cold was playing in Hershey, PA and Wonka wanted to go. I was worried that Henry would be like, “YOU ARE NOT DRIVING THAT FAR AWAY WITH ANOTHER MAN.” But Henry understood even then how much these things meant to me, and he was OK with me going.

(I mean, I totally would have still went anyway because that’s the kind of selfish, arrogant, solipsistic fucking bitch that I am!)

But then Wonka started dating the future mother of his children, and our roadtrips came to an end. I had no idea that Henry would ever want to do these things with me, because I was so used to having completely separate lives from every boyfriend I ever had. But by that May, there we were, driving to Wisconsin to see Cold. And there have been many, many more concert-spurned road trips since then, whether he liked it or not!

Wednesday night, I was watching music videos on YouTube, because that’s just what I do, when Henry said, “Look.” He was holding up his phone to show me that this year’s Riot Fest line up was finally announced. I ran over and snatched his phone from him and immediately started freaking out because FAITH NO MORE. I had a feeling that they were going to be there so my eyes were blind to everything else on the list but that for the first ten minutes. And then the more I looked at the lineup, the more I freaked out. THE NOSTALGIA FACTOR IS OFF THE FUCKING CHARTS.

I started freaking the fuck out and chanting PLEASE CAN WE GO PLEASE CAN WE GO PLEASE CAN WE GO CAN WE CAN WE CANWECANWECANWE over and over but I was pretty sure the answer was going to be no because we kind of broke the bank when we went last year. But you know, I’m immature, head-in-the-clouds Erin and I don’t think about things like RENT and GROCERIES and BILLS. I was just about reaching Veruca Salt levels of brattiness when Henry got up from the couch in a huff and said, “Don’t start!” So I sat there, staring at the lineup and crying because these are things I cry about, when I got a text from Henry, who was in the kitchen. IT WAS A SCREENSHOT OF THE TICKET CONFIRMATION OMG CAN I KEEP THIS MAN FOREVER?! I guess he knew for awhile that going again was inevitable, so he was prepared.

And it’s a good thing, because I’ve had the days requested off from work since January.

I know I bitch about him being a killjoy a lot, but even though he really doesn’t like these things at all, he still does them because he is an A+ kind of guy. And I am super lucky to be with someone who maybe doesn’t  share the same passion for music as I do, but he understands that it is a necessity for me, like food and water. I crave this stuff! I can’t tell you how many times I have gone back and looked at pictures from last year’s Riot Fest because it puts me in a good mood. That weekend was so close to perfection, and I can’t wait to do it all over again with my frowning sidekick! #blessed

(Snoop Dogg is performing Doggystyle in its entirety. My 1994-self is FUCKING FANNING HERSELF with her Snoop lyric-doodled science folder.)

I am going to be so nice to him for the next several days months. Take all the naps you want, Big Guy!

***

I can’t wait for another 3-days’ worth of frowns! 

So yeah, naysayers: 14 years later and I’m having fun listening to whatever music I want while Henry drinks craft beer.  

I don’t know that I would really call this a tradition, but sometimes on Mother’s Day, Henry will act like The Best Man On Earth and take me to DelGrosso’s Amusement Park, about 2 hours outside of Pittsburgh, so that I can ride the fuck out of the Wacky Worm and shovel potato salad down my throat in the style of violent porno cunnilingus.

Or, you know, pie eating contest.

Plus, moms ride for free on Mother’s Day.

This year, we didn’t have to rent a car! Yay new car! We listened to Dance Gavin Dance THE WHOLE WAY THERE because it was Mother’s Day. Oh OK, let’s be real: every day is my day when it comes to radio control. The best part is that the stereo system is so good that Chooch chattered away in the backseat and I COULDN’T HEAR A WORD HE SAID! Ahhh, a mother’s bliss.

However, I did hear him pipe up from the backseat and request Circa Survive. I was like, “WHAT SRSLY? You want me to put on Circa Survive?!” and he said, “Yes. ‘Act Appalled’.” I almost broke my finger off in my frantic attempt to queue up this song post-haste, because I have been waiting NINE YEARS for my son to like Circa Survive. I used to listen to their first album constantly when I was pregnant with him! And I tell him that all of the time and he just rolls his eyes. But on this day? On this day, he sat in the backseat and sang along because that little fucker knows all of the words and has probably always liked them but he’s just like HIS DAD in  that regard.

 Henry pretended to hate The Used for like, 6 years!

God, what a great Mother’s Day present, hearing Chooch’s little boy voice singing along with Anthony Green. That was way better than the makeup from Ulta, and it was FREE!

My second favorite part of the day was when we got to Delgrosso’s and the old lady inside the admission booth looked at me skeptically and asked, “Are you….the mom?” YES I AM NOW GIVE ME MY FREE WRIST BAND, HERE JUST PUT IT ON ABOVE MY OTHER WRISTBAND FROM LAST NIGHT, THANKS.

And then right away, it was Wacky Worm time!

Chooch wanted to ride in separate worm-compartments and I threw an actual fit while we stood in line, and then accused him of not giving a shit about my feelings, and on MOTHER’S DAY OF ALL DAYS. Finally, he was like, “Jesus Christ, OK. Pick a damn seat!”

I hit my leg SO HARD when I sat down. The Wacky Worm is not kind to us tall kids.

Immediately after this, I went up to Henry and said, “FOOD.” He put in our pizza, came over to the bench Chooch and I were slouched upon, making fun of people, and handed me  the receipt. “Here. Listen for our number to be called while I go and order the potato salad.”

WTF? How did this become my problem!?

Of course, Chooch and I forgot about our big important task almost immediately, until I realized a few minutes later that a number greater than ours was being called. “WTF, did we miss our number?” I asked Chooch. So we got up and stood closer to the pizza windows, and I totally panicked while numbers were called out of order because HOW WILL WE EVER KNOW IF THEY CALLED OURS ALREADY?

It was so confusing and I kept emitting audible groans of disgust and anguish because why do I have to do this thing?

! It was probably the worst part of my day, maybe.

But then our number was called for real and Chooch and I had already devoured our slices by the time Henry came back to our table with his hot dog (which Chooch took from him) and the potato salad.

Henry is always the last one to eat.

Anyway, I was really mad because one of my biggest pet peeves is when Chooch gets food all over himself. I feel like, at the age of 9, he should maybe have a better grasp on his food-handling by now, I don’t know?! So I said, “PLEASE do not get pizza on  yourself, I’m begging you” and by the time I turned back to my own pizza slice, a glob of sauce had sluiced right off his chin and plopped right smack onto the crotch of his shorts.

I called him Sauce Crotch for the rest of the day and now I’m going to draw him a picture of Sasquatch wearing stained shorts, but don’t worry, he’ll also be holding a slice of pizza in his hand so it will look less like a menstrual mishap.

All you potato salad aficionados out there, ya gotta try DelGrosso’s. It is fucking ON POINT. I referred to it as “Creamy sex” once and I stand by that statement. Henry bought some shitty supermarket brand potato salad the next day and I was like, “Why do you have to bring this ghetto shit in my house? The day after Delgrosso’s, really? You’re killing me.”

On the Crazy Mouse, Chooch practiced all of his swears in one long tangent and I just don’t care to stop him from swearing anymore. Just don’t do it in school and I’m fine with it. Parenting sometimes takes mental strength which I do not have a lot of.  I feel tired just typing that out, to be honest.

There was some young kid on the carousel who had a 1990s Billy Ray Cyrus mullet and of course I took an entire series of photos, but I’m not going to post them here because I have a tiny shred of common sense that is telling me that might not be wise. (I’m trying to be smarter about blogging, and it’s been a struggle.) But my lord, was that mullet majestic.

The thing about Delgrosso’s is that once you ride the Wacky Worm and the Crazy Mouse, it’s like “………………….”

It’s a really small park and the rest of the rides are your typical carnival/county fair assortment: Paratroopers, Tilt-A-Whirl, carousel, Music Express, pirate ship…basically it’s a bunch of different ways to self-impose whiplash and/or motion sickness. I’ve gotten ridiculously sick here before, to the point where I had to lay down across a bench and pray to the Vertigo gods to reset my eyeballs and put the color back in my cheeks. I try to pace myself now, which means Paratroopers/45 minutes of nothing/ice cream/Music Express/45 minutes of nothing/watch Chooch play games/Tilt-a-Whirl/OMG I’M DYING LET’S LEAVE/go home.

Chooch is like, “I can’t wait until I can ride this shit with my friends and not my weird MOM.”

I couldn’t get  my eyeballs to stop moving back and forth after this ride and it was concerning.

We let Chooch go off and buy his own drink and then for a good 5 minutes there was a mild concern that he had been kidnapped. Don’t worry, he came back to us. Just like a boomerang.

A sweaty, foul-mouthed boomerang.

I wonder what it’s like to be Chooch.

Pre-Tilt-a-Whirl nausea.

The Tilt-a-Whirl was being worked on all day but we just happened to be standing near it when they declared success and a Delgrosso’s ride operator walked on to give it one more test run.

“IS IT OK NOW?” I called up to him, and he kind of nodded, sort of, so Chooch and I raced to get in line and Henry was like, “Seriously? The gate isn’t even open yet.” It took everything in my power not to turn around and shout “FIRST!!!” in the faces of the asshole kids behind us. MOVE A LITTLE FASTER NEXT TIME.

I guess the ride operator was trying to overcompensate for the ride being closed all day, because he left us on there for a good three minutes.

That’s about two minutes too long in Spinny Ride Time.

And you know how sometimes the Tilt-a-Whirl is a big fat dud? Your car doesn’t get any good spins? Well, this particular go-around was chockfull of violent spins, which were ultra giggle-inducing at first, but then it quickly turned to stomach-churning and I was afraid that I was going to giggle chunks of potato salad right out of my open mouth, so I was pretty quiet for the last two minutes.

When I stumbled off the ride, Henry was waiting there to say, “Good for you” with that smug fucking look on his face. And then, “So, I guess you’re ready to go home then?”

Twist my arm.

But first! One last ride on the Wacky Worm. Never too sick for the Wacky Worm. (Until I am.)

I wanted Henry to carry me to the car but he was just like, “You haven’t lost THAT much weight.”

***********

The next day, we were in our weekly meeting and our boss asked if we all had a nice Mother’s Day. Glenn spoke up and said, “Tell everyone what you did, Erin!” because he knows I hate talking in our meetings, so I mumbled that I rode the Wacky Worm but out of everyone in the room that day, only Glenn and Amber1 know about my Wacky Worm obsession so I mumbled a brief explanation and everyone was kind of like, “Oh. Ok.”

#misunderstood
FUN FACT: If you Google image search “Wacky Worm”, a picture of Glenn comes up on the first page.

On Mothers Day we went to Delgrosso’s  and I had a fun day.  Of course Mommy wanted to go on the Wacky Worm first because she’s obsessed with it. So we went to the bathroom first because if I say I have to go the while we’re there daddy will get pissed. So after the Wacky Worm we went on the Crazy Mouse and  a lot of the rides were getting maintenance checked and we waited in line for a while. Since the ride only has 5 carts we went on in like 5minutes. Then mommy and  I went on the Music Express and the Umbrellas. Then  I got ice cream which was Chocolate Marshmallow and I wanted to go on the Pirate Ship (aka Pharaoh’s Fury) by MYSELF because Daddy never gets a bracelet and mommy didn’t want to get sick because she wanted to go on more rides. While I was in line Daddy was EATING my ice cream and I only had a quarter  of it and daddy had half . In line I screamed at him and the people in front of me laughed.

But mommy gets to eat ALL of her ice cream (she just said “Because I’m the best”)

Daddy gave me 1 dollar for 1 game to win on and I picked  a game where you have to put BALLS IN A CLOWN’S MOUTH (which sounds so wrong) It was pretty easy minus the fact fact where you have to get 1 ball in each slot. It took me 2 tries to win. I won this CUTE ,PURPLE ,FLUFFY ,DELIRIOUS , AND PRETTY  PIG. I won it for mommy and then she said “Oh thanks, you can keep It in your room though.” I was okay with that. We named him Pukey JR. Then mommy and I went on the Tilt-a-Whirl which was under maintenance but we were the first people on the Tilt-a-Whirl since the whole day. It wasn’t a surprise but every time mommy wants to go on the Tilt-a-Whirl she gets sick. The last ride of the day was the Wacky Worm. We had a fun day at Delgrosso’s.

(BONUS!!!) The day before Delgrosso’s daddy and I went to Michael’s then Ulta to get mommy a present for Mothers Day. I really wanted a sticker book for while we are going to Delgrosso’s and in the car  for 2 hours. Daddy wondered how much it was I said 13 US DOLLARS and 20 CANADIAN DOLLARS. He said “OH HELL NO I BUY ENOUGH S*** FOR YOU!” I threw a fit the whole way into Ulta and I put on makeup in there and daddy was pissed. On the way back home from Delgrosso’s we went to a restaurant called Valley Dairy. Our waitress was named Sarah and some waiter was basically doing our whole service because Sarah was slow and having a rough ,rough day. (Speaking of having a rough day, Sarah in my class was having a rough day because her nose was bleeding like all day Tuesday and Wednesday.)

Sarah finally came to our service and asked for our order. After dinner I ordered a Clown Sundae and I sadly made fun of it and mommy said Sarah was having a rough day. I liked the sundae though that’s all that matters.

Meaty Thighs Are OK.

We were getting ready to leave for Delgrosso’s yesterday morning when I decided to have one of my standard “Wah, I’m so fat” shit fits. I always figure that Chooch isn’t paying attention to this shit, because why would he? My whining is not that interesting nor is it even slightly relevant. But then from the other room, while playing some stupid game on Xbox, he piped up with, “You’re not fat. You’re like Nicki Minaj. She has a big butt and thighs like you, and she’s still skinny. Kim Kardashian, too.” That weird little pep talk was a better Mother’s Day gift than the Urban Decay Vice palette that he and Henry got me!

Chooch’s Oh Snap Moment

On our way home from Delgrosso’s, we stopped at the mother of all Sheetz in Altoona. “Is this the Sheetz we went to that one time when we were fighting?” I asked Henry, referring to the miserable drive home he and I had from Allentown, PA last Memorial Day weekend. Chooch chimed in from the backseat, “Well, mommy, that’s hard to say, because you guys are always fighting.” His tell-all is going to be something else. (Also, we are not ALWAYS fighting! It’s mostly just me fighting.)

Also, with the music I listen to and all of my mental issues, Chooch has heard A LOT of screaming over the years.

Pickle Spreadsheets

We stopped at Valley Dairy for dinner. At first, we thought it was going to be an issue because we had to wake Chooch up from a nap and he is a fucking beast when awakened, so before we were seated, things were pretty sketchy. But then the opposite personality won out and we ended up with Super Entertaining Giggle Fit Chooch. One of the things that made him lose his shit started with a pickle. “Don’t you like pickles?” he asked me, noting that I hadn’t eaten the pickle on my grilled cheese plate.

My mouth was full, so Chauvinistic Henry answered for me. “She likes pickles, but 98% of the time, she leaves them on her plate.” He was so eager to divulge these statistics about my pickle proclivity! I had no idea Henry had been keeping such close tabs on my gherkin grazing.

“What, are you keeping a spreadsheet?” I asked Henry snidely.

Chooch considered this for a statement and then asked, “What’s a spreadsheet? Is that what the doctor puts over a lady before she has a baby?”

I fucking lost it right there at that Valley Dairy table, over top of my grilled cheese and the pickle that had only 2% chance of exploring my digestive tract, next to Henry who for once was unable to keep a straight face, and then Chooch started choking because he was laughing so hard, too.

“What?” Chooch laughed, trying to play innocent. “I see those all the time on the shows daddy watches.”

“Oh, he’s watching A Baby Story again, then?” I asked, and Henry just frowned. He only lets himself laugh for so long, you know. Then it’s back on the red eye to Frown Town.

Chooch and his “clown” sundae.

Stickers Make Chooch Pretty

I kept hearing about some sticker book that Henry wouldn’t buy Chooch at the craft store Saturday night. I felt bad at first, because I was hugely into stickers when I was his age, and I fondly told them about all of the sticker books I had, and the one that was especially for scratch-n-sniff, and how I used to stuff them all in a big purple tote bag that started to rip in one corner because so many sticker books were sardined in there. I heard Chooch emit a disgusted sigh; he hates when I get nostalgic because the theme is almost always Erin’s Charmed Childhood Where She Got Everything She Wanted. EXCEPT THE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE OF MY MOM, CHOOCH. (He doesn’t care about that yet.)

“What kind of sticker book did you want?” I asked Chooch.

“It was Pokémon and—-”

“Oh,” I waved him off. “I wouldn’t have bought it for you either. That sounds dumb.”

He started to get real defensive and tried to explain all of the merits of this dumb sticker book, and Henry sighed heavily and dragged his hands down his face.

“This is what I went through all last night,” Henry said. “We left Michaels and he threw a fit in the middle of Ulta when I was trying to buy your Mother’s Day present.”

Chooch started giggling uncontrollably as Henry told the tale of the tantrum, because there’s little Chooch enjoys more in life than hearing about what a spoiled brat he is and how he embarrasses us. So while Henry told me about how Chooch LAYED IN  THE MIDDLE OF THE STORE WHINING and how Henry turned around just in time  to see him applying one of the tester lipsticks straight on his mouth, Chooch was nearly swallowing his tongue from laughing so hard.

Half the restaurant was staring at us because sometimes it’s hard to tell if he’s crying or laughing.

“This is what it’s like to be around you and Corey, by the way!” Henry said accusatorily.

“And then I was smearing eye shadow on my fingers like nail polish!” Chooch wailed, reaching the point of hiccups. He was laughing so hard that we could see the cherry from his clown sundae (made shoddily by our waitress Sarah who was having a really bad day so I made Henry leave her a nice tip but mostly because she reminded me of Lynn Gunn from PVRIS) resting precariously on his tongue, a choking hazard lying in wait.

Henry grumpily told me that he had to practically bathe Chooch in makeup remover before they left the store. This whole scene was hilarious to me, that the catalyst was a fucking Pokémon sticker book that he is STILL talking about! So now Chooch and I were both laughing our faces off and Henry was so uncomfortable.

These are the things that I want to remember the most about Mother’s Day.

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**Party Peeps**

• Zac
• Lucy
• Olivia & Sophia
• Owen
• Jolee
• Sharyn
• Harland
• Kara
• Chris and Monica
• Corey
• Janna

Chooch decided a while back that he wanted to have a laser tag birthday party, even though none of us have played before. Believe me, I was fine with this because it meant SMALL. As in: FEW KIDS. I’m not sure who was more excited the day of his party: Chooch or me.

Once everyone arrived, our personal party coordinator came in and led us to the laser tag holding cell, where she bumbled through the rules of the game and pretty much had us utterly confused. We split into two teams without hesitation: Awesome Adults vs. Dumb Kids. And then Janna “accidentally” gouged the back of my arm with her stupid laser gun and I was like “Bitch, best count your blessings that we’re on the same damn team.”

But then I noticed that after Henry was done helping all of the kids suit up, he stayed over on their side. “C’mon, Erin. They have to have at least one adult or it won’t be fair!”

Yeah, exactly! Why give them a chance!?

I was instantly nervous about this. Henry and I being on opposing teams means that Super Competitive Extreme Asshole Erin comes out. I was hoping that we could be on the same team so that I wouldn’t have to get stressed out and possibly risk eviction from Laser Storm and/or losing a friend. (I really think this is why my friend Stacey hasn’t come to one of my game nights since 2009. I get real ugly.) So look, I’m competitive in general, but as soon as the competition involves Henry as an opponent, I take it to new levels. Any old friends reading this remember the dreaded New Years Eve Trivial Pursuit debacle that resulted in me flipping over the game board (the table was too heavy to flip) and screaming about how everyone hates me all over some question about Yoshi? And then spending the next year constantly bringing up the fact that not a single person there that night cared enough to stop me from driving home drunk and psychotic?

O MEM’RIES.

My mantra is always, “I don’t care if I lose as long as Henry doesn’t win.” And the sad thing is that he genuinely always wants me to win!

I’m sorry, Henry fans, but as soon as our respective team doors opened to the laser tag arena, Henry went from being my loving life partner/father of my child/all-around Jeeves to motherfucking Bin Laden. I COULDN’T WAIT TO SHOOT THE SHIT OUT OF HIM!

One of the twins was smart and chose my team. She said she didn’t want to be on her sister’s team, and I understood. SHE WANTED TO WIN.

Once we were in the darkened room, a strange combination of panic and adrenaline melted over me and I realized I forgot everything we learned, all of the rules, all of the objectives. But then I remembered that I had but one mission: KILL HENRY. So I put my blinders on to everything but Henry’s dumb head and I shot that motherfucker every single chance I got. I even did the whole run-dive-shoot thing at one point and sincerely hurt my hip but I think my shot hit him so it was obviously worth it.

Oh, and no big deal, but my team won.

Because Henry is a cheap-ass, he only paid for ONE ROUND of laser tag. And apparently one round is only like 15 minutes! (Which apparently is long enough for my hair to stick to my neck with war-sweat.) Luckily, we had the party room for an hour and a half though, so we didn’t have to kick anyone out after the game was over.

Back in the party room, Party Warden passed out everyone’s score cards and I was pleased to see that I at least beat Janna. I don’t think any of the kids so much as glanced at their score cards, but us adults studied and compared ours obsessively for a good ten minutes. Monica was extremely disturbed by the inaccuracy of her score card and I think it came close to ruining her whole day. “Apparently, it doesn’t matter how many times you hit base, because it’s worth ZERO POINTS,” she announced bitterly.

Asshole Henry shot me one time more than I shot him, so that sucked. But the real victory was that Henry was NOT the MVP of the whole entire game—Corey was! SUCK IT, HENRY!

But then Corey kept bragging about being MVP and I was like, “UGH SUCK IT, COREY!”

I took this picture shortly after I burst Corey’s MVP bubble by snapping, “Whatever, at least I can see colors.” #mybrotheriscolorblind

In this picture, you will note Henry’s naturally-sour face looking even more acerbic. Apparently, he had taste-tested the Sierra Mist and was appalled. “IT HAS NO TASTE!” he said repeatedly until people eventually started looking around the room and saying, “Do you hear something? Is someone talking to us? Oh, it’s just Henry.”

He ended up sending back the Sierra Mist because it was “just carbonation.” He was a huge dick about it too. The party warden was like, “Shucks sir, I have no idea what you’re bitching about but sure, I’ll bring you another pitcher if it means you’ll stop twitching your molester ‘stach in my general direction.” That broad could not wait for our 90 minutes to expire.

If Henry had a blog, his version of this day would be all about how he saved the children from imbibing defective soft drinks, spent so much money in order to buy his son’s happiness, and probably some boring anecdote about when he was in THE SERVICE not fighting in a war. Laser tag was probably more dangerous and combative than anything he did while “SERVING.”

Included in the party package was a cake, and it was actually not as disgusting as I imagined it would be. We sang the weirdest version of Happy Birthday to Chooch, and I have no idea who set the tone, but it sounded like a fucking funeral dirge. (See also: Nick Cave singing Gregorian chants to a dead person.) I thought maybe it was just me, but afterward, everyone seemed to mutually agree that it was weird and the party warden looked nervous.

In this picture, Monica is using the calculator on her phone to work out what her actual score was since none of her base hits made it on her score card.

All of the kids got tokens for the game room afterward, and there were a bunch left over so the rest of us practically mauled Henry for some.

Monica was obsessed with this old broad with her nose in a Danielle Steele book who had the audacity to make disgusted scowls at all of the children running around making gleeful sounds. She was sitting so close to the skee ball row that it’s surprising that no one tried to roll one of the balls off her surly, disapproving face.

“Seriously? You expect to be able to read your book peacefully in a LASER TAG ARENA?!” Monica scoffed. “Please take a picture of her,” she whispered to me.

I don’t remember being so terrible at skee ball. I gave the rest of my tokens to some child.

Chris texted me before the party and said that one of the gifts she bought him might be a bit girlish, and should she wait until the other kids weren’t around before giving it to him? I said no, because I’m always up for watching my child being humiliated, but it turned out to be a “yummy crochet” kit and he could barely contain all of the stoked feelings. Chooch mentioned not too long, at dinner with Chris and Monica, that he wanted to learn how to crochet (specifically, the Japanese style of crocheting, amigurumi). Of course, this conversation turned weird, with the suggestion that Chris become possessed by the ghost of Henry’s late grandmother in order to teach Chooch how to crochet.

Hey, if you read the post about Chooch’s actual birthday, then you already know the spoon story. But here it is again, anyway, BECAUSE I LOVE TELLING IT! We had a small family party on Chooch’s real birthday, and by the end of the night, he was exhausted and cranky. Some might say his “inner Erin” was coming out. When he walked past Corey on his way to bed, he stopped and in this totally shitty, sarcastic tone, said, “Oh and thanks for much for the present, Corey.”

“Your mom said I could just bring your present to your laser tag party next week!” Corey cried defensively.

“Whatever, it’s probably just going to be a spoon,” Chooch spat in a spoiled tone. And as he began to walk away, he paused and added, “For me to shove up my ass!” He wasn’t even trying to be funny, but Corey, Janna and I all fucking lost it. It was late, we were slap-happy, and then that happened and it turned into A Thing.

Corey made a note in his phone that just said “Get spoon.”

And oh, he got a spoon, alright. Corey had it tucked in the gift bag with the actual presents he bought Chooch, but I suggested that we take the real presents out and hide them, so it looked like literally all he got Chooch was a spoon.

When Chooch pulled it out of the bag, he was so confused. I couldn’t believe he had forgotten in a week! His cousin Zac said, “Is that for your mom to beat you?” and all of his friends were just like, “Your parties are so weird.” It wasn’t until he read the card that he realized it was from Corey and then it all kind of clicked, so he stormed off to “have words” with him. Total highlight of the party.

The Spoon. It has become something of a phenomenon in our house. We take #spoonselfies now and Henry is making a plaque for it so that when Chooch isn’t toting it around, he’ll have a place to hang it for the night.

In this short video, you can see the tail end of Monica saving my face from acquiring a basketball imprint, laser tag sounds (that’s my dumb voice screaming “OH MY G—-” at the end), and the Unwrapping of the Spoon. I wish I had a video of the super-sad Zoloft commercial happy birthday serenade, but COREY deleted it because he didn’t like how his VOICE sounded! Ugh, the worst!

***

Chooch just strutted past in his underwear and I asked him if he had anything to add while I’m writing this. He said, “Yeah, thanks for the spoon, Corey.” And then as he ascended the staircase to his room, he mumbled, “I love it.”

I still have no idea how we managed to not get kicked out.

HAHA SIKE. This is just another post about Warped Tour and not actually the maniacal manifesto/illegible murder confession that I think some people (Henry) have been nervously expecting.

Every time I look at the Warped Tour lineup for 2015, I feel like I might have immaculately conceived. The only downside is that there is no way I’m going to be able to see every single band on my list; there are just too many and some are bound to overlap. #musicfestivalproblems

In all of my obsessive Warped Tour thinking/planning/daydreaming, I uncovered some photos of Chooch that I never posted from his first time at Warped Tour in 2013. They were lost in some random desktop folder, probably Henry’s fault.

Christofer Drew is offering 45-minute songwriting classes this summer and Chooch and I have been talking about whether he wants me to sign him up for that or not. It costs extra, and if he’s going to get all starstruck like the last time he met Christofer, then that’s kind of a waste.

Chooch was all pissed off a few weeks ago because he was waiting for the bus that takes him to the after school program, when some middle school girl walked past him, saw that he was wearing a Pierce the Veil shirt, and said, “You probably don’t even listen to Pierce the Veil.” Bitch, he was singing Isles and Glaciers songs when he was still sitting in a CAR SEAT, so shut your dumb face.

If she only knew that he was practically born into this scene! Last night, I was YouTubing live Dance Gavin Dance videos while Chooch was putting together some Minecraft Lego thing, when he said, “Put on something from when Kurt Travis was the singer.” And then we watched an entire A Lot Like Birds show.

Because clearly, Chooch is a poser.

I hope we see that girl at the Sleeping With Sirens show next month. You know, if she was able to get tickets before they sold out in less than 5 days.

I posted a picture of my Warped Tour ticket (it’s the special 3D collectors ticket with Choonimals artwork, duh) on Instagram and WARPED TOUR REGRAMMED ME!

^^^^ Totally the apogee of my Instagram tenure.

TWO MORE MONTHS. TWO MORE MONTHS. TWO MORE MOTHERFUCKING MONTHS!!!

Saturday was so chill in comparison to past birthday parties, where we rent a pavilion and stress over weather, food and decorations. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good birthday blowout, and I love getting to see everyone, but the “getting to there” part gives me gray hairs and then I’m usually not even able to hang out with everyone because I’m running around like an asshole and trying to make uncomfortable small talk with school parents. This time, we opted to just have family over for cake, and then a small, separate party for his school friends at a laser tag place next weekend.  My nerves are still thanking me profusely. Birthday parties are a lot of work!

Chooch looks like he’s smiling, but he was actually in the middle of making gritted-teeth demands and being a brat because his party hadn’t started yet, god forbid he had to sit with Janna and me any longer!

So then he was like, “Eff y’all, I’m doing my word search, which is more entertaining than either of you.”

But then Blake showed up with a present and believe me, Chooch’s love can 100% be bought. But then if you stop buying him shit, that love gets lost real fast.

Blake got him some kind of talking cat thing, so Chooch had it saying “Janna sucks” within seconds.

We invited the neighbor kid because he’s adorable and Chooch is always at his house, so we figured it might be time to return the sentiment. I don’t like kids in my house because of all of my Stuff and Breakables and also because it’s My House, plus you never know what will be going on in here, anything from making STD cookies to serial killer cards.  But I made an exception and within 2 seconds, the kid ogled the Devil rug and then put on a pig mask. It seemed to be OK.

“I just wanted to take a picture of you being a brother,” I said to Blake as I snapped this.

The guests:

• Janna
• Markie
• Blake
• Robbie & Nikki
• Corey
• Judy
• Kelly
• Zac
• Sam
• Steph and Kian

Then Henry’s sister Kelly and her crew arrived, so it was officially a party. And Sam is old enough to drink legally now, I can’t believe it!

The only annoying part of the whole thing was a cake. The laser tag place provides its own cake (which I’m sure is going to be “delicious”) so I only had to order one for the family soiree. Chooch said jokingly that he wanted a Teletubbies cake, and I was like YES I CAN MAKE THAT HAPPEN. I ordered a photo cake from my beloved Bethel Bakery, and submitted a picture of the Teletubbies onto which I had Photoshopped Chooch. But the next day they emailed me and said I would have to submit a different picture because of Copyright bullshit.

My response was a curt, “That’s fine,” which obviously is Bitch Code for You Just Fucking Ruined Everything, Including My Life.

I just had a “That’s fine” moment two days before, when we went to Sugar & Spice specifically so I could get a soft serve cone with crunchies, but then I had tha audacity to order one of the “designer” flavors instead of standard chocolate or vanilla, so the broad was like, “NOW THIS WILL BE TOO SOFT AND MELTY FOR THE CRUNCHIES.”

To which I replied with, “__________”

“Do you want me to try and blend them in instead?”

“No, just forget it. Forget the crunchies,” I said in pout-slur.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. It’s fine.”

IT WAS NOT FINE. THE CRUNCHIES WERE THE WHOLE REASON I CAME TO YOUR LAME ICE CREAM SHOP, BITCH, LEARN HOW TO USE YOUR DUMB MACHINE THEN!

Meanwhile, Henry was like, “Ooooh, I know THAT ‘it’s fine’!”

I didn’t have a plan B for the ice cream, but I had one for the cake. I told the bakery to just nix the photo aspect and give me an outdoors background. Then Henry printed out the Teletubbies and the photo I wanted to use of Chooch, and we just stuck them on the cake with popcicle sticks.

I was kind of angry at the half-assed cake decorating on the bakery’s end though. My family has used this bakery for as long as I have been alive and it has never let me down, except for being closed EVERY YEAR the week of my birthday. I mean, the cake itself was still delicious as fuck (it’s the best in the city), but it looked like it was some kid’s first time using an airbrush. The piping along the edges didn’t even connect!

They were apparently running behind and made Henry wait, but they apologized by letting Chooch pick a complimentary treat from the bakery store. At first, I was all fired up and ready to put my Hate Mail cape on, but I don’t know. I love Bethel Bakery. Maybe I should excuse them this one time.

(If the cake had tasted bad, then it would be WAR.)

This was a scary moment, but I need to put out that Chooch has better cake-cutting skills than me. I mean, a blind double-arm amputee probably does, as well.

My house was full of so many good people and it made me incredibly happy. Marcy would have hated this.

….and this.

I know, it looks like they’re engrossed in their phones, how cliche, but they were all actually playing some Xbox party game that you use your phone with. I think this particular one was a Pictionary-type game and one of the pictures was “surprise tape worm” which is the best thing ever and sounds like one of my old AIM screen names, to be honest.

JUDY.

Don’t think I forgot to treat myself on this sacred day. I celebrated the ninth year of my C-section incision phantom pains with a ticket to the Smashing Pumpkins acoustic show at the Library Music Hall in June. They’re only doing this in like 10 cities as a pre-tour thing, and surprisingly Pittsburgh was one. Tickets went on sale Saturday at noon, and I’m glad I (impulsively) bought mine then because it’s sold out already. I bought mine only an hour after they went on sale and the best available ticket was in the last row of the balcony. I’m fine with that. I was actually surprised that there were any left at all at that point!

Corey with the sprinkles that he made Henry buy him over ten years ago when he was sleeping over and had a “hankering for sprinkles.” I can’t believe we still have these in the kitchen?!

“What? They never go bad!” Henry said defensively.

Meanwhile, Corey and I were excited that we had a big audience to entertain with our Janna Tales, especially now that we have the Robitussin incident to add to the repertoire. The Silhouette Story in particular seemed to get a better response this time around. (At Marcy’s wake, it was met with a few unreadable reactions, like possibly we were being offensive.)

I think my favorite part was that Blake and Robbie stayed so long. And Robbie brought his new girlfriend, Nikki, and we all highly approve. She was so nice and cute! 

Sometime after 11, Henry’s family left and it was just me, Chooch, Janna and Corey. We promised Chooch that we would do the Tetris Dance on Just Dance with him, because he needed three more people. We had all been drinking, plus our natural giddiness exacerbates the drunkiness, so when it got to the part where we had to pick up Chooch horizontally, we totally dropped him. He was so mad, which only made us laugh harder because that’s what dicks do.

And we’re dicks.

Chooch reached his limit around midnight and declared that he was going to bed. He stopped as he was passing Corey and sarcastically said, “Oh, and thanks so much for the present.”

“Your mom said I can just bring it to the laser tag party next week!” Corey cried.

“Whatever. It’s probably going to be something dumb. Like a spoon,” Chooch grumbled. And then as an afterthought, he spat over his shoulder, “For me to shove up my ass!” before storming off to his room.

We fucking died. Can he be anymore like me? Nothing is ever good enough! Weee!

And so that is why Corey now has a “get spoon” reminder in his phone.

(Flashback to 4.)

Thank you to everyone who wished Chooch a happy birthday via text, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram—I showed him every single one of the birthday wishes and he ate it all up. Birthdays rule, man!

Henry took Chooch out shopping for “anything he wanted” and then successfully talked him out of 99% of the “anything.” He finally got Just Dance for Xbox and spent most of the day getting in accidental exercise*, stopping long enough to go to the Southside with me and Janna so I could take my Marcy portrait deposit to Kyklops (the girl doing the tattoo for me is married to an old friend of mine who was actually attacked numerous times by a young Marcy) and to get a late lunch at La Palapa, where we had a handsome waiter named Lester who was so handome that I had to tip him handsomely to match his handsome face. Sigh. Lester.

Then Janna had to use to the bathroom, which inspired Chooch to make hashtags with his fingers and loudly announce, “HASHTAG JANNA USES THE BATHROOM.” She was so pissed. His inner “Kelly” becomes more and more dominant by the day. He is TOTALLY related to me and Corey.

NO children allowed in Kyklops. Chooch didn’t give a fuck. He had a word search book.

*(Here’s a clip of Chooch dancing to You Spin Me Round, with cameos by me and Janna.)

The day culminated in a family cake gathering with a grand finale of Corey keeping us up late watching “ghetto fights” on YouTube.  Pretty sure that’s what gave me nightmares last night. 

Both of Henry’s sons came! And Corey! I can’t remember the last time all three of them were here at the same time. It was awesome.

I will write more about that later. Right now, I’m nursing a severe cinnamon horchata Blue Moon and confetti cake hangover. Devil Rug help me.  

Ugh, Chooch is going to be nine on Saturday. How does time go by so fast? I hate it! We’re not doing a big party this year. He wanted to have a small party at the laser tag place for his friends, and then we’re having some people over on Saturday for cake.Nice and simple, which will be a nice reprieve for my bulging nerves.

I don’t know what dumb Henry is getting him, but I bought him a ticket to the Sleeping With Sirens acoustic show in June, because The Summer Set is opening and they’re one of his favorite bands. I’m pretty meh about both bands, but I took one for the team and made sure I was on the SWS website at the exact moment tickets went on sale. It did eventually sell out too, and it’s at one of the smaller venues in Pittsburgh, so I really anticipate a night in a small room with hundreds of screaming teenage girls!

But, it’s worth it. Especially when he found out I bought tickets and then proceeded to scream like one of the aforementioned teenage girls.

(From last summer’s Warped Tour.)

I ordered his birthday cake last night (oh boy, it’s a good one) and wanted to order one for my C-section incision too (9 years of phantom pains!) but I took Henry’s frown as a no.

Sometimes my day can be so spectacularly disappointing (all work-related, nothing that actually matters) but then something music-related happens to save the day. Pierce the Veil was added to the Warped Tour lineup, and even though everyone pretty much already knew that because of a leaked flyer, it was still awesome to find out for sure!

This year’s Warped Tour has the potential to be better than 2008, which was my favorite one! 

Being in the house has been hard on me this past week, and I have been lashing out at Henry and Chooch. Projection, you know? I am definitely grieving this death in a much different way than I have with the other cats. I feel like I have no control.   Luckily, it was a beautiful, sunny day, kind of chilly still, but who cares. I made the unilateral decision that we would get tacos and take them to the cemetery.

Sunshine helps. So do tacos.

I had been wanting to try El Burro for a few months now, once I found out that they have a vegetarian/vegan menu. Any food establishment that has the decency to cater to those of us who don’t dine on animals is immediately OK in my book. However, this place kind of left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Literally.

First of all, I didn’t feel “cool” enough to even walk in. And then Chooch was being difficult because he loves doing this thing where he’s only interested in eating things that aren’t available where we are. So of course he was whining about only wanting a sandwich. Luckily, the girl behind the counter was too busy staring at her phone and listening to Chvrches to notice that a meltdown was about to occur.

This all happened while Henry was outside putting money in the meter because he thought we were eating there even though I explicitly said, “And we will eat in the cemetery.” I said this like four times. FOUR TIMES! I was already irritated, so this helped a lot, thanks Henry.

Anyway, I got a sweet potato and cauliflower taco, which was excellent. But as a game time decision, I also blurted out that I wanted the vegan chorizo burrito, which turned out to be a mistake. It was TERRIBLE. It takes a lot for me to be disappointed with Mexican food (authentic, TexMex, Taco Bell — I’ll eat it all), but this made me super sad.

The tortilla tasted exactly like that Taco Bell grilled stuft thing, I don’t know what it’s called. Grilled Stuft? Which is whatever, I guess. But the inside was just terrible: bland, soggy rice and the vegan chorizo was dry as fuck. It was like eating something I had made for myself, you guys, like dining on actual dry rot. So disappointing and peppered with alarming flavors that you just can’t pinpoint. I even made Henry taste it and I screamed, “WHAT IS THAT WEIRD TASTE!?” and he was stumped. It takes a lot to make me complain about food, but that was enough for me to probably never go back.

But those tacos though. Ugh. I should have just gotten more tacos instead of that day-ruining burrito.

There is this local guy who reviews the FUCK out of the city on Yelp, and he is so goddamn annoying. He’s like the Oh Honestly, Erin of Yelp reviews in that they are way too long, didn’t read. But the worst part about him is that he has his dick so far inside a thesaurus that his reviews are actually sketchy to read if you’re the type of person who frowns upon becoming inseminated by jizz-coated 5-syllable words. Sometimes Henry will torture himself by trying to slag through an entire paragraph about the salt on a pretzel, and he has to pause after every other word to ask me, “What does this word mean?” and a lot of times, I don’t even know!

“He has no fucking life!” I cried after hate-reading a particularly War & Peace-ish review of pizza, to which Henry sneered, “Actually, he does. He’s always going places so he can write his obnoxious reviews.”

In one of his reviews about your basic bar food, he replaced “salty” with “saliferous.” SALIFEROUS! Even my phone was like “the FUCK is this?”‘ and tried to change it to “saki detours.”

UGH FUCK THAT GUY. There is a time and a place for smart würdz, and a Yelp review is not one.

Anyway, I only mentioned him because Henry was excited when he looked up El Burro on Yelp and noticed that our mortal enemy hasn’t been there yet.

Yeah so I totally pouted about my burrito and we left the cemetery after about 10 minutes. Luckily, the day was salvaged by a spontaneous trip to the Antique Mall on Rt. 65.    

There were no wheelchairs, but I had my eye (I only have one of those now) on some questionable art work.

My least favorite part of the day was when Chooch didn’t know some broad had entered the room with us and he came bursting out from behind the beaded curtains, saying some shit about “JUST DID DRUGS.” Great. I’m glad that his YouTube habit is teaching him to associate beaded curtains with drugs.

I should probably pay better attention to the shit he watches. Ugh.

We taught Chooch about these things called ROTARY PHONES and then some old man came over and told us a yarn about how when he was a kid, he’d put a nickel in his shoe in case he needed to phone home from the soda shop’s phone booth. Chooch had this shit-eating grin on his face the whole time, like this guy was lying to him.  I mean, what a boring lie.

Then we got gelattttoooo and I was sad because I got coconut cream pie gelato but wished I had ordered hazelnut. UGH. GELATO REMORSE.

I don’t think I was mean to anyone for the rest of the day. So, that was good.

We watched some more Breaking Bad that night and I was excited because Howard Jones’s “New Song” was playing very faintly in the background of one scene! I was like HOWARD JONES! I JUST SAW HIM! And Henry had that HOW CAN YOU HEAR THAT?? look on his face. (OMG HE’S ON THE RADIO RIGHT NOW TOO AS I’M WRITING THIS! I can hear him wafting down from my bedroom radio.)

And then it was Easter! We are guilty of falling into the whole Christmas Lite mentality. So this year we were like fuck it and just got him 2 CDs (Fall Out Boy & Ed Shereen—he LOVES Ed Shereen for some reason), a Grumpy Cat coloring book and the standard candy loot. Which is still more than Easter is worth, but oh well. Jesus is Risen, put on the Fall Out Boy CD.

Chooch didn’t seem to notice that we even downgraded the size of the actual basket. I guess he’s not as spoiled as I thought!

Then, family photos and a late afternoon frolic in South Park where Chooch ended every one of his actions with the obnoxious declaration of “LIKE A BOSS” except for when he fell and bit it, but don’t worry, I made the declaration for him.

Like a boss, Chooch.

After the park, we met Corey at Pan Asia for inappropriate, LOUD AS FUCK laughing which Henry haaaaates.

For some reason, Corey and I are still riding high on the time we went to Nemacolin Castle with Janna in December and Janna got in trouble for taking her mom’s car. Corey pointed at the frosted pane of glass behind the sushi bar and cried, “I’m picturing Janna behind the glass, getting beat by her mom!” And then I started cracking up too and Chooch yelled, “Is that all you two do is laugh?!” He was just mad because he brought an entire backpack of Pokemon cards and crayons and Corey was too distracted by his salacious thoughts of Janna.

And then somehow we started pretending that Janna was a coke head  and Henry was just like DISAPPOINTED SIGH. Sorry you’re so saliferous, Henry.

It was a nice Easter weekend.

The Easter Bunny came back from vacation just in time for Henry and me to regress and sit on his lap.

Chooch just sat there eating carrots while Henry and I fought in between shots. But to be honest, I think this one of the most docile photo shoots we’ve ever done, somehow.

I have shorts on underneath here. I’m not that slutty. Ignore the writing on the bathroom stalls.

Chooch happily took our pictures. He was like fuck yes, the camera isn’t pointed on me for once.

God forbid we should ever just have a regular photo taken of us.

Happy Easter, you guys!

Hi guys! Entertainment blogger Spencer is back to give you some gritty alternatives to the standard rom-com flicks you might be queuing up for the big V-day.

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Valentine’s Day can be a wonderful thing, between spending time with your significant other, celebrating your love, chocolate… However, it’s a very stressful day for many of us who find ourselves rushing to get reservations, picking apart nearly empty store displays for the perfect card, and praying that we got our SO a gift they’ll actually like. It can be, well, a horror.

So, instead of opting for a traditional, sappy, Valentine’s Day movie to watch, why not opt for something a bit grittier? We already know that celebrating the unconventional side of the Holidays can be an enjoyable experience, so why not do the same for Valentine’s Day? Here are some V-Day flicks to get your heart racing in an entirely different way.

The Birds

This Hitchcock film features the classic story of boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, then boy and girl get attacked by flocks of blood thirsty crows! In the film we follow Melanie Daniels and Mitch Brenner, who meet in a bird shop and begin a little romance from there. That is until the birds in town begin to act strangely. It’s a classic film for a reason; it’s thrilling, it’s groundbreaking, and it has just the right touch of romance to warm the heart (before the birds get to it, that is).

Interview With The Vampire

This film made vampires popular before many of today’s Twilight fans were even born, and for good reason. Based on Anne Rice’s book, the movie tells the story of two vampires from the 1700’s (played by Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise) who are living, and preying, on the residents of modern-day San Francisco. Told from the point of view of Lestat (Cruise) the story chronicles his journey over the past 300 years. Perhaps the most disturbing part of the film comes with the introduction of Lestat and his friend Louis’s (Pitt) vampire “daughter” whom they rescue and train to be a blood thirsty killer in a riveting performance by a pre-pubescent Kirsten Dunst.

 Only Lovers Left Alive

In an unconventional twist on the “love story about a couple who’s been married forever”, this film’s central characters Adam and Eve (played by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton) really have been married for centuries. When Adam, who is a wealthy and famous musician, becomes distraught at the state of the world, Eve, who’s living in Tangiers, picks up and comes to visit him in Detroit. Their peaceful moments together get turned upside down by the visit from of Eve’s spoiled little sister Ava. Things go from bad to worse, and the couple is driven closer by their obstacles. It’s a vastly underrated film that many missed due to poor distribution and promotion. Luckily it’s easy to catch through services like Netflix and DV.

My Bloody Valentine

Perhaps the most appropriate horror movie for the season comes in the form of this classic 80’s horror film. The film takes place in the appropriately named Valentine’s Bluff on the day of a big Valentine’s Day dance. In their rush to get to the dance a group of miners clock out early but forget there are men below. Soon after, the mine caves in and only one man is left alive. The lone miner, Harry Warden, goes on a killing spree in town as revenge. He warns the townspeople to never again have another Valentine’s Day dance and they oblige for 20 years. But nearly two decades later they decide enough time has passed, and boy, are they wrong.

Spencer Blohm is a freelance entertainment and lifestyle blogger who lives and works in Chicago. You can follow him on Twitter at @bspencerblohm.

It was Christmas, and I opened presents and spent time with my family. I will tell the most important things that I got . A camcorder, singing machine classic, and a Gunther CD (Gunther is this thing I found out on the internet and he made a song “Ding Dong Song”).

I looked in my stocking and I just a bunch of candy and a Simpsons LEGO mini figs blind bag. I got Ralph Wiggum. I really wish I got a Shopkin Blind Box. I really want a Shopkin.  OK back to the story, I got sprees and reeses cups.

I got a Pet Talk Cat and Dog pillow it has a little recorder and you press the button and talk into it and save it and put in the pillow. Press the ear and it says what you said in the recorder.
I hadn’t used it yet. I hadn’t slept on it.  It isn’t that fluffy its pretty cold.

I was having fun opening presents and spending time with my family. I got a lot of stuff. And a lot of candy. I love Christmas!

Daddy’s being a nerd while watching me open presents or looking at my camera. He’s so dumb. LOL. He is a creep. Just standing there watching me *shivers* open presents *screams*! I get nightmares sometimes. *shivers*.

I got a bunch of cool books. Right now I’m reading The Fourteenth Goldfish. I didn’t finish it though. I got a Kareoke Machine and sang a bunch of songs lime the Party rock Anthem. I love everything I got!

Christmas is so fun, I got games like Cat games, Tetris Namo, and Story Cubes. Blake came over and we played Kitten Caboodle. I won and I adopted the most cats.

I got a camcorder and I recorded everything I saw like Daddy’s face. I went crazy with it. It was from the Shaytards. I got so I can be a youtuber and play games and record stuff. I said I would call my 0 subscribers Demon Cakes. I would be a better youtuber than PewDiePie. I would have 1 billion subscribers. I would get 1000 dollars per video. I would be RICH. Youtube knowledge.

I got Kitten Caboodle where you have to adopt the most cats when there are only 7 cats. So get four and you win instantly. I played against Blake and I won because I got the cat that looks like Speck. Her / His name was Fergie. The way to get a cat is you ask for something when you only have 2 cards ask for something you need like if you  have a yarn ball and a bed ask for a milk bowl so you can get Fergie.

I got Gunther I saw that it had Ding Dong Song on it so I started to say Ohh you touched my tra la la. I laughed too. I listened to it and sang it on my Kareoke Machine and all I knew was Ohh  you touched my tra la la. No lyrics were on the screen like there should be but I just changed the song to Charli XCX. It had no lyrics either. So I just sticked with the ones it came with.

I had a fun time doing stuff and listening to music while opening presents. I got a bunch of awesome stuff.

If you hadn’t heard of the MommyAndGracieShow you would laugh. I got a
#CookiePizza picture with CBG (CreepyBasementGrandma) LOL. Me and mommy were watching Birthday Party videos and we came across Mommy And Gracie Show. They live in New Jersey or something because they have that New Jersey accent.

We were going to Corey’s house and we went to Pan Asia for dinner or Chinese food. I recorded mommy with the camera while it was just resting on the wall and it recorded mommy drinking tea. LOL! My Christmas was fun!

Today is the last day of 2014 (newsflash for those calendar-ignorant motherfuckers out there) and I was just struck with an extra dose of blogging panic because I need to purge all this December bullshit before it’s too late and I get shot in the neck with a poisoned dart and then dragged to whatever the blogging version of Guantanamo Bay is….Dooce’s basement? I shudder to think.

• First, let’s talk about Secret Santa! I had A-ron this year and I was super-stoked about it and went completely overboard because Secret Santa-shopping is fun as fuck. I mostly got him toys and candy and novelty socks, but the best part was in the wrapping, which I can’t post here because it all involved pictures of various people around the law firm and I’m trying to not be a reckless blogger, remember? Meanwhile, my Secret Santa was KILLING IT. I was convinced that it was Nate, because every day, I was getting very Erin-specific notes and Kit Kats, and not too long ago, Nate asked me what my favorite candy was. AND I SAID KIT KATS. Plus, I figured it had to be someone that I talk to everyday and/or am Facebook friends with, because the details were on point.

The TMNT figures made me really lean toward Nate, but then toward the end, Barb was like, “FYI it’s not Nate” because she had to deliver something on behalf of Nate and it was not to my desk. But then I started thinking, about how my gift wasn’t there that day when I got in, but then it showed up later, AFTER MEAN AMBER HAD ARRIVED FOR LATE SHIFT. How could I have been so blind!? All of my notes were specific to things that she is forced to talk to me about EVERY DAY. (Except the Pens—that’s a mutual topic for us.) So yes, it was definitely Mean Amber (or Amber Claus) and she told me that Nate only asked me what my favorite candy was because she told him to. WELL-PLAYED. God, Secret Santa is so fun!

• In other Christmas news (j/k, this whole post is Christmas nonsense), Chooch joined chorus this year and has consistently failed to bring home pertinent information that involved parents might need to have. Such as: when recitals are and what he needs to wear for said recitals and what time he needs to be at the school before these supposed recitals. A few weeks ago, I got a text from Henry at 5:20 (10 minutes before I was done with work) to tell me that our son had just informed him that he had to be back at school by 6:00 in order to get ready for the 6:30 recital. That jerk is so goddamn lucky that my job is in such close proximity to our house and his school. So yes, we got him there in time and got to watch him sing a medley of Christmas carols. When that was done, the music teacher took the stage to announce that while the band was setting up, several students were going to come out and play a piece on the piano. I was like, “Oh great, more unbridled talent. How will we stand it” when suddenly, the first kid to come back out on stage was my own goddamn son. My stomach flip-flopped, my entire body spontaneously clenched. This was a big surprise to me. Chooch got behind the piano and knocked out a few bars of “Deck the Halls” and, while not without flaws, it wasn’t too bad for a kid who barely practices and has a laid-back punk keyboardist as his teacher. I mean, I knew that he had been working on this song but I thought it was something that he was playing for the kids in music class or something, not in front of all of these parents. And then when he finished, he promptly took a bow. The people behind us were fucking loving it and kept shouting, “IS THAT YOUR BOY? IS HE YOURS?” like we just witnessed a young Amadeus up there and not an 8-year-old rushing through Deck the Halls from spotty memory. But goddammit, I was proud of that kid. Especially afterward when he joined us in the crowd and kicked back in a chair like his solo was no big deal. I asked him if he was nervous and he looked at me like I was absurd. “No. Why would I be?” We are so not alike in that regard.
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  • Also in CHORUS NEWS, I was just getting on the trolley two Mondays ago when Henry texted me and said that Chooch had called him from school, that he had his chorus field trip that day and was supposed to wear a white button-down shirt since they were going to be performing at the courthouse downtown, and that he HAD a white shirt on, but MOMMY made him take it off. Fucking little liar. You know what he was wearing that day, because he insisted on dressing himself? An over-sized CAT T-SHIRT. Again, this kid is fucking lucky that I work downtown and was able, with Glenn’s permission of all people, to run down the street to Burlington and buy a stupid white shirt for my lying sack of a kid, and then later in the morning, I had to run up to the courthouse which I actually know where that it is thanks to JURY DUTY 2011 when my co-workers did everything short of aiming beacons into the air to make sure I knew where I was going. I found the spot where all of the other school buses were dropping off the band kids, etc., so I stood there waiting for Chooch’s school, which of course passed right by, with Chooch, wearing a baggy cat t-shirt and a shit-eating grin, waving to me from the window. So I had to follow the bus around the entire courthouse because the music teacher apparently is as woefully unprepared as me, until finally the bus pulled over and the teacher jumped off and ran inside the courthouse, I guess to check in. All of Chooch’s dorky friends were waving and pointing to me from the bus, and I’m like, “I gotta get back to work, put your damn window down” and Chooch is like, “What? Why?” and I’m really getting irritated at this point, at him, at the situation, at all these dumb kids laughing and waving at me. It took FOUR KIDS to help him get his dumb window down, at which point, I balled up the Burlington bag, chucked it through the window and growled, “BREAK A LEG!” I found out later that he was pissed that I didn’t stay to watch his performance, are you fucking kidding me? Maybe if I hadn’t wasted my entire lunch break plus some SHOPPING IN A SCARY STORE and practically casing the courthouse like a creep, I could have stayed.
  • Between all of this, the Open House fuckarow, and god only knows what else we’ve unknowingly missed, his school probably thinks he has alcoholics for parents.
• I didn’t think Henry and I were exchanging gifts this year since we did the whole Philly weekend thing two weeks ago, but then he told me he had something for me so of course I begged him on Christmas Eve to let me open it. I could tell right away that it was a CD and you guys know that I love music so much but I still started to feel disappointed because CDs are every day purchases, you know? #spoiledbrat But then I opened it and realized that it was a Mike + the Mechanics CD with tickets to the show stuffed inside! YOU GUYS. This was one of the few times I didn’t have to feign appreciation! I was actually going to go to this show alone because Henry seemed really off-put by the ticket prices (when you’re accustomed to $10-$20 small band shows….), but then he bought two tickets for the same seats we had for the Goblin show and I am so incredibly stoked! My Pappap loved this band. I don’t even care that the original singers aren’t going to be there (well, one is dead…) because Mike Rutherford will be, and hopefully my Pappap’s spirit.
  • Also, Henry’s lucky that there were tickets inside, because he didn’t get the album that has “Silent Running” on it. What an asshole.
• Before going to my dad’s house for a Christmas visit, we had dinner at Pan Asia with other loners/non-Christmas types. It was nice because the place wasn’t dead. But I made the rookie mistake of sitting across from Chooch, who just got a camcorder and is already calling the (zero) subscribers of his (non-existent) YouTube channel “demon cakes.” There’s an approx. 7-minute video of me sipping my oolong tea. It’s riveting. Henry has already made a gif out of it.

• Hanging out at my dad’s on Christmas night was really nice and we all laughed a lot. On the way home, I was thinking about how nice this Christmas was — no tears, no ungratefulness. And then my phone buzzed with a Facebook notification. My friend Jenny had tagged me in a comment that she left about my serial killer cards. She’s always pimping my shop, so I didn’t think anything of it at first, until I noticed that the thing she was commenting on actually WAS one of my cards….only with some other person’s logo on it. So I went to the actual page on FB that this was posted on, and it turned out that they had taken EVERY ONE OF MY CARDS and put their logo on it. From what I could tell, they weren’t selling them, but they were taking credit. And they were getting A LOT of great feedback from people who were commenting, liking, and sharing. We’re talking 100s of people. This guy, whose name I refuse to mention, has over 30,000 likes on his page. These are all people who could have been potential customers, but instead, they think he’s the “brilliant” one churning these things out. I know it’s a really weird/dumb/sketchy thing to be involved in, but I have literally cornered the market on serial killer greeting cards since 2007. And I take pride in that. So first, I commented on one and, even though my immediate reaction was to fucking go off, I tried to stay rational and explained that I was the creator of these cards, here’s the link to my shop, etc. Then I started replying to some of the comments too, saying things like, “Thanks! I made this card. Here’s the link to my shop.” I tried to send this guy a direct message and couldn’t find the option to do. Then I noticed all of my comments had been deleted. He fucking blocked me. I found his website and contacted him through that; meanwhile, I had posted on my personal and business Facebook pages and a lot of my friends and customers were going after him, only to have their comments deleted and get blocked as well. Some lucky people were even getting personally harassed by him. I couldn’t even believe the balls on this guy. He was so mean and cocky. He told my one friend that he was trying to enjoy Xmas with his family, so what’s her beef. WELL THAT IS WHAT I WAS TRYING TO DO TOO! Oh my god. Then he and Henry started messaging back and forth and he flat out told Henry that his girlfriend “found” my cards on the Internet and since I didn’t get “permission” from the inmates to use their pictures (are you fucking kidding me), that it was OK for him to steal from me. Because my ideas and the time I put into creating these cards don’t mean shit without BTK’s seal of approval, I guess. Then he replied to my email and basically tried to bully me into giving him a cut of my card sales because, and I quote: “I have 30.000 followers and you have 200. Who are you?” And then he attacked me on my business page, basically saying that just because I “steal” inmates’ pictures and cut and paste, doesn’t make me an artist.  It was clear that I wasn’t going to be able to reason with this piece of shit, but luckily Facebook came through in less than 24 hours and took down all of my images from his page. We’re protected under basic copyright laws, but you better believe we’ll be registering for an LLC, which I never thought would be necessary before since we don’t really sell  that many of these things and it’s certainly not our bread and butter. I mean, Henry and I both have full-time jobs. I’m not sure how I would feel if I made enough money off serial killers to quit my day job, anyway. I haven’t heard from this guy since Facebook stepped in (although the next night, he “liked” my non compos cards FB page….and I have a feeling it’s not because he wants to kiss and make up). I just have a feeling this isn’t the last I’ve heard from him, but I’ll tell you — I have never been so thankful to work at a big law firm.
  • Not to be corny, but the best thing about all of this is that so many of my friends, and their friends, and past customers totally had my back. They defended me, they hijacked this guy’s hashtag, they reposted on their own FB about what he was doing, they tipped off their mutual friends who also liked this guy’s page. It was just really, really nice to not be in this alone. Octavia even started sending messages to the people who had liked his posts that used the images of my cards, since he had blocked her from replying to their comments. And now I’m officially friends with one of my favorite repeat customers, Polly! I’ll take my 200 friends over his 30,000 followers (which he probably paid for) any day.
  • The worst part was that I let this guy get under my skin and into my head and spent the rest of the weekend questioning my validity to the point where I wanted to just close my shop altogether.
  • Also, it wasn’t about the money. It was about pride. I created these and he was taking credit. Do you know how nauseating it was to see people giving him praise for something that I made, something that came out of MY head? I was shaking so violently Thursday night that Henry had to tell me to sit down and he handled it from there.
  • In his email to me, he stated that he writes to all of the “big name killers” and that Dennis Rader probably wouldn’t be too happy knowing I was using his picture, but he spelled his name “Radar.” And then he did it again on mu Facebook pages, and Henry said that he spelled it that way in a message to him, too, which makes me laugh. It was everything I could do not to type “I HAVE A DEATH ROW PEN PAL TOO!” Ugh.
• In better Christmas news, Henry framed my Goblin and Circa Survive show prints! And then he didn’t hang them the way I wanted. But still. At least they’re framed and not rolled up somewhere.

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Overall, 2014 wasn’t too bad. Sure, it had low points, what year doesn’t? But it also brought a lot of laughter, amazing shows, and new friendships. And I get to end it by going to the hockey game tonight with Henry! So for that, I can’t hate on 2014.