Penelope Ann Killer has mostly adjusted to our house. I mean, she plays and eats and poops like her crazy-ass sister Drew, but the moment I try to approach her, she’s on like HIGH ALERT. Sometimes she’ll let me pick her up but she hates it so I try not to even though she’s so FLUFFY AND ALL I WANT TO DO IS HOLD HER AND SQUEEZE HER.

However, every single night, she makes herself comfortable in my bed, usually right between Henry and me, and this is when we’re allowed to pet her. Come morning, though, we’re back to being on a stranger basis with her. So annoying.

Earlier today, I thrust my phone over the glass divider behind me and said, “Look how cute Penelope Ann Killer is!” to Glenn, who looked extremely unimpressed.

“That’s what you named her?” he asked.

“Uh yeah,” I said, like way to pay attention. It was even on our department’s Wiki page! “You know, like Penelope Ann Miller?”

“I don’t know who that is,” Glenn mumbled, nodding off at the sound of his own monotone.

“FROM KINDERGARTEN COP?!” I cried, because hello, is she not a household name in everyone’s wigwam?

“I’ve never seen that,” Glenn gurgled on his ennui-generated drool.

“OMFG, are you serious!?” I yelled incredulously. “Well, what about Adventures In Babysitting?”

“Nope.”

“She was Brenda, the best friend!”

“Didn’t see it.”

“DON’T YOU REMEMBER SHE RAN AWAY FROM HOME AND GOT STRANDED AT THE BUS STATION AND BROKE HER GLASSES?!”

He had pretty much dropped out of the conversation by then. I almost posted on Facebook the simple (YET COMPLICATED) statement that Glenn has not seen Kindergarten Cop but I was trembling with too much rage.

This prompted me for the next hour to share the jarring news with everyone who walked past my desk.

“Well, I can kind of see that,” Michele said, insinuating that he’s too old to understand the critically-acclaimed cinematic game changer of IT’S NOT A TUMAH.  And then Todd agreed with her and I was like, “STOP DEFENDING HIM! STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR GLENN BEING A LAME. GLENN IS A LAME AND WE ALL KNOW IT!”

Unbelievable.

Anyway, my whole point was that the credits of Kindergarten Cop marked the first time I ever saw the name Penelope spelled out and I distinctly remember laughing, “PENNYLOPE? What a dumb name!” and then shockingly, my mom corrected me instead of letting me go through life pronouncing it that way. Because that’s a thing my mom would do.

Because I lead such an exciting life, I stayed up late Friday night watching old Wildwood, NJ videos on YouTube. There is something REALLY ENCHANTING and perverted about watching the home movies of strangers and I don’t give a fuck, I’ll do it until I die.

I would say about once a year, I go through heavy Wildwood withdrawals and I need to nourish myself with copious amounts of nostalgia, even if it’s another persons memories.

My family vacationed in Wildwood every summer. It’s one of the few spotty memories I have of my birth dad, and also some of the best memories I have of my mom. My grandparents came too, every summer, and it was just the fucking cherry on top of the entire year. I can’t think about that beach and boardwalk without being flooded of the best memories and thoughts of my Pappap. Literally, the best memories of my whole life were made in fucking New Jersey, of all places.

I haven’t been back since 1991 and as much as I want to, I’m also terrified because I don’t want to see how much it’s changed.I stupidly made the mistake about 10 years to look at the Morey’s Piers website and I felt like Morey himself had kicked me in the gut with a steel-tipped boot, that motherfucker.

ANYWAY. Before I wind up just straight up living in the rabbit hole, let me get to my point. One of the videos I watched on YouTube was a clip from a 1994 documentary and now I’m utterly obsessed (what else is new) and going to buy the entire film because how I can not have a chunk of cinema like this in my private collection:

I’m kind of sad that I only ever experienced Wildwood through the eyes of an innocent child, there only to ride some fucking dark rides and eat a goddamn hot dog at Hot Spot B. I never got in a fight with anyone there other than my step dad. And I didn’t even put him in the hospital!

Hi hey hello this is a live journal post from 9/2005 when I was a few weeks pregnant & craving meat, old political pins, & OJ Simpson stuff. 

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

The Inseminator and I celebrated Labor Day by waking up ridiculously early and going to a flea market. He suggested it the night before so there was no struggle trying to get me to wake up; I likened it to Christmas morning.
As soon as we arrived, I already saw the first item for my wish list. Imagine a regal and proud black grandmother, donning her Sunday’s best and finest pearls, sitting pretty with her head tilted to the left. Now, surround this vision with a giant gilded frame and you have what I covet. 
“Why would you want a portrait of someone’s grandma?” Henry scoffed. “And look how big it is! Where would you even put it?”
I couldn’t help but picture it hanging above my bed, watching over me every night. Like a godmother. I was getting more and more attached by the minute and I couldn’t stop thinking about who she was. Was she even still alive? I bet she made a mean Sunday dinner. I imagined she was also in a gospel choir. It pains me that I’ll never get to eat her corn bread.
Henry dragged me along in spite of my warnings of, “Don’t jostle me; I’m pregnant.” We walked disinterestedly past table after table of rusted tools and crocheted doilies, until something finally snapped me out of my pout.
A stack of R.L. Stine books. And not those shitty Goosebumps books, either. I’m talking the real deal. Gems like “The Babysitter” (and the sequel too, I almost died), “Beach Party” and “The Dead Girlfriend.” I scooped up about eight of them (in preparation for my baby’s future) and held my hand out for Henry’s money. The man behind the table counted my change while a lit cigarette dangled from his lips and I kept leaning back further and further like I was competing in a stationary Limbo, trying to avoid the smoke. It’s amazing what a week of pregnancy will do.
As I happily tucked away the change in my purse, Henry disgustingly asked, “Why is it the only time you take out your wallet is to put my money in it?” It’s funny because it’s true! I love looking at the financial pain on his face. The way it’s been slowly chiseling lines into his flesh–ooh it makes me tingle. And then I realized that I was carrying a bag full of paperback books so I flung it at him and said, “You carry this; I’m pregnant.” 
Playing the pregnancy card rules. Why didn’t I think of this a long time ago?
Minutes after pleading with Henry to buy me this fabulous antique wooden chair with a ten foot tall back (“It can be my pregnancy chair! I’ll sit in it everyday!”), I stumbled upon a table that would change my life forever.
It was a table displaying a wide array of antique political pins. And I wanted. Wanted wanted wanted.
There was one in particular that I couldn’t pry my eyes from. It was the size of a quarter with small silver balls decorating the black velvet edge and the face of some dude was in the middle.
An elderly man came over to help me. I stubbed my finger into the glass case and said, “This one, please.” He pulled out my pin and when he placed it in my hand, I felt goosebumps (and not the lame R.L. Stine kind). 
“That’s from 1896, you know,” he said in between old man shakes. Ooh, the history–I could barely stand it.
“Wow…….who is it, anyway?”
The man laughed, which kind of made me mad, and said, “That’s Bryan. He ran against McKinley.”
I don’t doubt that my face had sprouted undulating question marks, but I still wanted it. “How much?” I asked. I figured I could learn all about this Bryan fellow after I bought it. Henry was standing off to the side, showing us his back. This is what he does when he doesn’t want me to see him laughing. 
“Fifty dollars” the old presidential snob laughed, as if he knew this was too much for me. Well, he was right–this time.
“Oh,” and I handed it back to him.
But don’t think my dreams have been thwarted. I’ve already imagined myself wearing a black beret, boasting that pin on the front for all to admire. I’ll be back. I’m going to collect political pins now. 
I walked away with my head down and Henry tried to cheer me up by reminding me that we could go look at the selection of junk indoors, and maybe I could find some cool necklaces. I wasn’t trying to hear it, but as we crossed the threshold to the building, I stopped abruptly and started sniffing with my head held high. That scent was unmistakable, wafting seductively around my head like a ghost trying to score some oral. This was pretty good considering it was 8:00 AM and the hot dogs weren’t even out yet.
“I want a hot dog. With relish.” I haven’t partook in meat for 10 years and now this dumb kid is trying to make me throw that all away? It hates me already, doesn’t it? “Man, I’ll take anything on a bun right about now,” I moaned.
Henry’s eyes were glazed with shock, but then he started laughing. Sometimes he’s just asking for my fist in his mouth. “Cravings, huh?” No shit, asshole, is that what that is? Thank god for Henry — not only is he a Professional Driver, he’s also a Professional Father. I can already hear it: “Well, when my ex-wife was pregnant…” or “When my original son was born…” Goodie, I can’t wait to have my pregnancy compared to his ex-wife’s. 

And speaking of cravings, gone are the days of sour cream love. I ate so much of it that when we went grocery shopping over the weekend, I almost heaved in the middle of the dairy section. Then this morning, I had a fleeting memory of my sour cream and cracker meals from last week and started dry heaving into my soaped-up hands. Oh god, here it comes again.
I was starting to get angry and was just about to throw a tantrum when the perfect distraction, as if sent by god himself, manifested to my right.
“Oooh! Toys!” There was an entire section filled with stuff like Thomas the Tank Engine (in eighth grade, I signed everyone’s yearbook with my Thomas stamp–I was really into it) and old McDonald’s glasses. This corner had it all. Everything but OJ Simpson stuff, which is what I was really in the mood for. They had Pogs there, which made me think about my OJ Simpson trial Pogs. I even had this really elegant brass (or something like it) slammer that had a picture of Simpson’s face engraved in it, with “Innocent” across the top. I cherished that slammer, and then some jerk in my homeroom stole it from me because it made him “sick.” 
After a hyper Chinese woman held me captive in front of her table for 20 minutes, tempting me with hermit crabs (I just bought another one the day before; I named him Dijon and he and Tabasco are getting along just fine) and bamboo shoots (“They’re good for your mind“), my heroic boyfriend came back and saved me (after ditching me to begin with) and we left to get breakfast.
“Is that good?” I asked as Henry shoveled sausage links into his gyrating mouth.
“What, my sausage? Yes.”
“I bet.” And I went back to silently eating my non-meat, non-taste breakfast.

I was joking the other day at work about how trouble follows me everywhere I go in that department, and why when I am clearly such a sweet, innocent, demure human being!? And it got me thinking about other jobs I had, where I was a holy terror on purpose and gave no fucks about it, because what was the worst that was going to happen? I was going to quit after three days and my mom would still pay my rent.

Rinse and repeat.

But if I had to pick a place that got the best version of Asshole Erin, it was definitely Echostar.

PICTURE IT: The year was 1998. I had recently lost the only steady job I ever had, as a telemarketer for Olan Mills Portrait Studio—which, coincidentally, is how I met the guy who got me to take the only bus ride of my life, which I mentioned last week. Joey was one of my cold calls (as opposed to those on the coveted and golden PAST CUSTOMER LIST) and after letting me pant my way through the whole portrait package spiel, he laughed and said, “Well, that sounds really great, except I don’t need it because I’m a photographer.” Turns out, he was in Pittsburgh going to the Art Institute for photography, and we REALLY HIT IT OFF over the phone. Like, instant connection. This is how people used to hook up back in the day! Over the phone, on sales calls. Anyway, my supervisor was starting to catch wind that I was no longer trying to make a sale, or at least, not the kind of sale I was being paid to make, so I quickly gave him my number and then we proceeded to stay up all night on the phone when I got home that evening and before I knew it, we were making wedding plans, moving to Montana, and buying a sheepdog. I mean, until I actually met him and then it was “……” But I still got on a bus with him and went to his place on the Southside, because I’m fucking smart.

OK OK, so our Olan Mills telemarketing branch got shut down (thanks, Internet) and my mom was started to put pressure on me to find something else.

There was another telemarketing job after that, where I sold a credit card terminal to a tattoo shop and then got a free (and shitty) tattoo out of it, because back then I had A Personality and it was impossible for me to not make friends over the phone. Now I won’t even ANSWER the phone. So by this point, I had myself pigeon-holed to the telemarketing industry. It was apparently the only skill I had attained somehow. That’s a little known fact about dropping out of high school: you’re spilled out into this holding cell while everyone else is running off to college like normal, functioning humans, and you’re given two options: drugs or telemarketing. I had a mild interest in drugs back then, but then my friend Brian got me a job at Olan Mills and totally ruined that plan.

After quitting the credit card terminal place, I applied at Echostar (Dish Network), which had just opened a huge call center in McKeesport and it was like A Really Big Deal for us people who weren’t qualified to do anything much greater than bag groceries. It was so new that the call center wasn’t even finished, so the training classes were being held in this really old joint called the Peoples Building, and it was such a shady area that we had to have security guards escort us from the building to the parking garage every night. (Evening classes, ya’ll.)

What I will always remember the most about this job is that I started on the Monday directly after returning from Philly, where I had attended the Dracula’s Ball with my friend Cinn. I almost didn’t show up for my first class at all because my eyebrow piercing had become so infected from all the glitter I was wearing that evening, plus the fact that the new hoop was shoved in forcefully by some guy who looked like the guy Happy Gilmore shot with a nail gun to the point where I PASSED OUT IN HIS SHOP and woke up on a couch with him standing above me, holding a paper towel saturated with my blood, saying, “Wow, look how much you bled!” So all of these factors led to an eventual infection which caused my eyelid to swell up and I had to walk into this class room with my hair covering one side of my face, looking like I was trying to hide a black eye. But then I was like “Fuck it” and just started flaunting it and that was how I made a bunch of friends in that class on my very first day, by being the youngest person in the class who had a gross piercing story to share as an introduction.

(I ended up going to the emergency room right after class that night, where a doctor had to cut the ring out of my face while a nurse watched on and said, “This is exactly why I told my daughter she’s never getting pierced.”)

At the start of this first class, our trainer Mike had us go around the room and say our name with a descriptive adjective that started with the same letter. I fucking love these things because I’m a nerd, so when it was my turn, I shot out of my seat and cried, “EFFERVESCENT ERIN!” Everyone in the class laughed at  my enthusiasm, and that was basically the start of Mike’s infinite disdain for me.

There were lots of tests and POP QUIZZES.

The class was a month long. We had to learn all about the company, customer service, operating the company’s computer system, and all of the various cable packages they offered. It was kind of like telemarketing and support combined: we had to help customers with issues they might be experiencing with their service while trying to upsale them at the same time. I was kind of torn, because I used TCI for my digital cable and I was obsessed with it. (This was pre-Comcast.) I loved TCI so much that I turned down a pretty nice apartment when I found out that the cable used in that area was ADELPHIA.

P-U.

I sincerely wish I had stayed in touch with these people. They were fucking nuts.

So my heart was never really in this job from the get-go. (I mean, how much of a heart could one really put into this sort of job, anyway?) Class quickly became less of learning and more of an opportunity to hide behind computer terminals while passing notes and giggling with my new friends, Bobbie (a girl), Roniece, and Letecia.

These girls though. They were the only reason I kept coming back to that class, night after night. One time, I arrived in tears because my pet frog Hubert had died that day. They helped me eulogize him on our break, and it was the sweetest thing that I will never forget. THEY WERE MY RIDE OR DIES, obviously, except that no one said that in 1998.

We were totally the bad kids, and very quickly we became A Class Divided: there was us and a handful of the other younger people plus some of the soccer moms (surprisingly) and then there were the Others, made up of the older women and the people who were surprisingly actually there to learn. They would get so fucking irate every time Mike would have to stop class to chastise one of us. It got really bad too, and if us Bad Kids wound up in the same place as some of the Others during our dinner break, they would get so ruffled and tight-lipped, like we had just sleazily oozed over the threshold, flicking our switchblades open and closed, popping our gum, and making cunnilingus Vs with our fingers.

It was like being in college after all! Lol, j/k.

One of the girls in our group got bitched at by Mike because he found out that she was sneaking out onto the fire escape to smoke. So then he had to have the building manager come up and lock the door to the fire escape, which made us scream dramatically about, “BUT WHAT IF THERE IS A FIIIIIIIRRRREEEEE?!” while cracking up behind his back.

There is one moment that stands out the most for me though, and that was the day we were learning how to add notes to customers’ accounts. The company was smart enough to make sure we were on a training server, so all of the customers were Jane and John Does. Trainer Mike was having each one of us take turns going into the fake accounts and adding notes based on the scenarios he read to us, so after the note was “published,” it would show up on everyone’s computer. I quickly realized that if I skipped ahead, I could add fake notes and then everyone else would see them by the time we made it to that particular account.

I quickly alerted my homegirls about this and we all giddily forged ahead and began adding childish notes, the only one I for sure remember was “Our trainer sucks ass.” NOT SAYING THAT WAS MINE.

But it was mine.

Needless to say, when the rest of the class, and Mike, stumbled upon these, there was a major uproar. The people on our side laughed and appreciated the effort of our antics, while the nerdy ones were appalled at our juvenile behavior and began clucking and whatever else old bitches do when they’re mad at the Youth of Today.

Mike was furious. I mean, this was his breaking point. You could practically see his pupils turning into boiling point thermostats, the veins popping out of his forehead like someone REALLY WAIST DEEP in some late night viewing of The Erotic Network, the LARGE FONT letters queuing up in his brain before exploding out into a “I DON’T GET PAID ENOUGH TO DEAL WITH THIS MOTHERFUCKING BULLSHIT” rant.

When Mike eventually regained his composure—kind of—he pounded his fist against his desk and demanded that whomever did this, speak up.

Of course none of us did. And he definitely could narrow down the suspect pool to three. But Bobbie, Roniece and I just hunkered down lower, our faces red from stifled laughter.

Then he started threatening us.

“If no one comes forward, then the whole class will suffer!” he roared, and this made the Other Half of the class pivot in their seats, thrusting their fingers at the three of us, screaming about life’s injustices and their inability to get a good Echostar education thanks to our disruptive behavior and basic tomfoolery. Still, we wouldn’t take the blame.

(This morning, I was actually telling Henry this story, and through tears of laughter I said, “Can you believe those bitches were so upset over that? What losers.”

“Yeah, imagine being concerned about your job,” Henry dryly replied.)

Mike then told us that the CEO of the company, Charlie Something-Or-Other, was coming to town to deal with this, that the fucking CEO OF THE COMPANY was flying in from COLORADO just to YELL AT OUR WHOLE CLASS.

Like, OK sure, Mike. We all knew he was coming in because the grand opening of the Pittsburgh location was that weekend. But still we were sure surprised the next night when fucking Charlie himself made a guest appearance in our dumb classroom, and proceeded to lecture us about respecting Mike, how he puts a great deal of effort into employing the BEST TRAINERS to provide the rest of us with the knowledge we need to succeed within the company. Mike stood to his right, hands clasped behind his back, looking smugger than a motherfucker grading Echostar tests.

It was fucking surreal. I loved/hated every moment of it. I think we were simultaneously proud that our actions warranted such a dramatic response, but also stunned that we didn’t get fired when we probably should have.

Hilariously, that one lady back there in the pink turtleneck was the wife of some dude who worked at my family’s drywall company, so she would go home and tell him about all the shit-stirring I did, and he in turn would go to work and tell my mom. The phone calls I got from my mom was fantastic. “What are you doing over there?!” she would cry. “Please don’t embarrass me!” But that dude’s wife was actually cool as shit; she was on our side and thought the whole situation was hysterical. When the “Goody-Goodies” started to rally against us, she gave me a big pep talk outside on the sidewalk and told me that they were just angry old women who had no joy in their lives and to not let them get me down. I mean, these broads went full-throttle Mean Girls on us, which was stupid because we weren’t directing any of our antics against them. We were just a bunch of goofy idiots who were bored at studying the various remote controls that came with the satellite dishes. I was nineteen — of course I didn’t take this job seriously!

But you know, looking back on it — wow I was a fucking douche bag.

This was my life for a whole month.

Somehow, we all managed to make it to the end of the month-long training course, but the real victory is that we all PASSED THE TEST. It was time for us to move to the newly-built call center and begin our live training, head-sets and all. But first, we decided amongst ourselves that we should celebrate during our last class.

Even Trainer Mike was on board with having a party, but he was definitely partying for much different reasons.

I volunteered to get a cake, which was no skin off my back because all I had to do was call Mommy and tell her to deal with it.

“What do you want it to say?” she asked.

“I don’t know….;this class sucks’,” I joked. Then we went on to talk about other things, probably me whining about all the things I wanted her to buy me.

The next day, and I remember this vividly because it was a bad day, I had to leave my apartment to go to the mall and pick up the cookie cake. But first, I realized that I forgot my car keys, and how I realized this was that I was unable to open my car door with the CORDLESS PHONE that I left the house with instead of my key chains. And then I couldn’t open the apartment door because my apartment key was on the keychain so I had to call my mom (on the cordless!) to come and open my door with the spare key she had. Even back then, I was a spaz about being late. I have ALWAYS been a spaz about being late.

(Hey 1998 Erin, never change.)

By the time I had my keychain, I was in pedal-to-the-metal mode and floored it to the mall, where I said, “Nah!” when the Original Cookie people asked if I wanted to see the cookie cake before they put it in the bag. Then, several feet away from the stupid Peoples Building, I merged into the right lane and didn’t see that there was a car in my blind spot so then I had to pull over and deal with THAT nonsense.

And so I was late. And in a really shitty mood. Which didn’t get much better when Bobbie lifted the lid of the cookie cake to reveal that it boasted a delicious declaration of This Class Sucks.

“Fucccccck,” I whispered. “I thought my mom knew I was joking!” And then I played back our conversation and realized I never told her what I actually wanted the stupid fucking cake to say.

I was nearly about to cry because everything kept happening! But then I was like, “Fuck it, I’m probably going to quit this job anyway, so who cares.” And it turns out, Mike definitely didn’t care! He came over, swiped off the “cl” with one swift motion of his finger, and then started cracking up.

I guess we kind of made up that day, over pizza and unfortunate cake sentiments. But honestly, I think he was just really fucking giddy about never having to deal with us hooligans again.

I mean, look at how innocent I was! This was also when I was going through a heavy goth phase, in that I spent most of my free time in a goth chatroom, listened to goth music, and had goth Internet friends. I never went full-fledged goth, but LOOK AT HOW PALE I WAS. So I would go to my training class every night and teach all of my new, normal friends things about Dracula’s Ball, Sisters of Mercy, and Darkchat. Their response was always, “Giiiiiiirl.….” paired with the raised eyebrow of skepticism.

I did end up quitting right after we “graduated.” It just wasn’t for me. I saw Bobbie once afterward, when we met at Nigro’s, a lounge down the street from Echostar. And the next summer, I hung out with Roniece and it will forever be known as The Night I Died On The Street In Front of a Strip Club In Braddock; but earlier that evening, Roniece’s grandma saved my friend Keri from possibly dying from a bee sting, so the day was clearly full of second chances. I kept in touch with Leticia the longest out of all of them, and dragged her to the Denis Theater twice to see “white people movies” which she bitched about on the way there and then gushed over the way home. (“Shakespeare In Love” and “American Beauty” lol.) I even visited her a few years later when she had a baby. But eventually, I lost touch with her too. I wish I could remember their last names so I could Facebook-stalk them.

Anyway, the moral to this story is that I am not even close to being a troublemaker at my current job, even though Todd thinks I’m a “bully.” So there.

(I think I actually am kind of a bully though.)

Ever since The Devastating Trolley News, I’ve been thinking about all of the find memories I’ve accumulated over the years. So for Flashback Friday, let’s sit down together and talk about the time I accidentally caught feelings for my regular trolley driver back when i worked late shift.

June 2013

Since I’m a Regular Trolley Passenger now (thanks for nothing, Henry), I have become quite chummy with the trolley driver, who looks like HOLY FUCK Bob Ross is alive and living in the mountains! He says things to me like, “Here we are again, huh? Vicious cycle!” (Monday Greeting©) and “Happy Almost-Hump Day, huh?!” (Tuesday Greeting©, although sometimes he jumps the gun and lets this one fly on Mondays) and I’ll let you wonder wildly about the rest. I’m not the only one to whom he’s so salacious with his salutations: this man loves, and I mean loves to a point of compulsion, to beep his trolley horn at all his PAT Transit buddies.

He beeps at buses, he beeps at other trolleys, he beeps at fare booth broads trying to enjoy their cigarettes, he beeps at construction people digging up roads. I mean, the entire trip to work is everyday is soundtracked by BEEEEEEEEP! BEEPBEEPBEEP!! BEEP BE-BE-BEEP BEEP, BEEP BEEP! It was kind of cute at first, until the time we were going through a tunnel and two buses and one trolley passed us, throwing him into beeping conniptions. It was like a full minute of the most obnoxious, we-are-inside-a-tunnel-you-motherfucker horn blaring that I have ever had to witness. It was kind of like being stuffed in a metal tube and thrown into a deep vat of hipsters screaming about Arcade Fire becoming popular, where the degree of screaming becomes more urgent and shrill the further down you tumble until you finally land in a junkyard of unlimited Fran Dreschers laughing to Jeff Foxworthy jokes. I could still hear it, faintly, an hour later when I was at work. Totally ruined my afternoon.

The one day, he saw one of his buddies in a parking lot, operating some sort of crane, so he was straight beepin’ his proverbial trolley dick, but the guy did not reciprocate the love. I’m 99.9% sure that this was intentional, so Bob Ross: New Career rolled the trolley to a halt and laid on the horn again. This time, the crane-operator doled out the most sarcastic hand-wave I’ve ever seen, and I could almost hear him screaming, “OK! I GET IT! MOTHERFUCKING HELLO! BLOW IT OUTCHER ASS!” Henry said that he was pretty sure that the horns on trolleys and buses were meant to be used as a warning, not a Salute Buzzer. The other day, I couldn’t imagine who Bob Ross of PAT Transit was beeping at, when suddenly I saw a squirrel dash across the tracks. So I guess he does occasionally use the horn as the warning siren it’s intended to be. Good for him. Super nice guy though, for real.

August 2013

This morning, without realizing it, I began to think about my trolley driver. Not like think thinking, nothing racy or scandalous, just a casual thought popped into my head.

The last time I saw him was Thursday of last week. As I slapped my ConnectCard against the orange pad on the fare machine, he cheerfully boomed, “An hour and forty minutes, then I’m done!” I already know that Thursdays are his Fridays (I’m learning a lot about him from the quick sentences he’s able to push onto me as I step onto the trolley everyday at 12:47PM) so I figured he meant that in that amount of time, he would be done for the week. I smiled and mustered up enough faux-enthusiasm for the “yay” that has become my signature response to his jubilant greetings.

Yesterday, I had a different driver. He wasn’t mean like the guy who yelled at me once for trying to insert a flimsy, laundered dollar bill into the fare machine, but he was no Resurrected Bob Ross, either. We feigned polite smiles at each other and then I took my usual seat in the back, where I read a book the rest of the way into town.

It wasn’t until this morning that I thought about it, the different trolley driver and what my regular trolley driver said to me last week. An hour and forty minutes. What if he was counting down to his retirement? What if that was my last ride with the out-of-place mountain man and his unruly facial mane? What if I never had the same driver again, no one to act happy to see me everyday at 12:47 on the dot, no one to make me feel like I was more special than the other commuters who just got a generic “hello” or “how’s it going?” and nothing fancy and personal like the time I went back to riding the tolley after Henry had spoiled me with two entire weeks of having a personal chaffeur and the trolley driver, his face all lit up around his gnarly gray cheek-shrubbery, cried, “HEY! HOW YOU BEEN?! I thought maybe you bought yourself a motorcycle so you could ride to work in style!” And I was mostly embarrassed, but also a little smug that he was paying attention to me and not the hoodrat in booty shorts who had walked on right before me.

And what if now he was retired and I would never get to say goodbye and wish him luck? And why do I even care? Other than it has been nice to be greeted by a friendly, now-familiar face every day when I step onto that awful trolley and begin my daily descent into the depths of Hell.

Yesterday, the new-to-me trolley driver didn’t happily honk his horn once. It was the quietest commute to work I’ve ever had.

****

Today, I was trudging along Potomac Avenue toward the trolley platform when a gruff, yet amiable, voice yelled, “Hello! Hey! Hello!” I lifted my sunglasses onto the top of my head and scanned the line of cars stopped at the red light. And then I saw him looking out of the backseat window of a black Blazer. My trolley driver!

I waved back and yelled an uncertain hello, because what do you say to your trolley driver when you run into him out in public, as a civilian, without the trolley intertubed around him? It seemed so weird and unnatural, seeing him without his forearm resting on the steering wheel of his long, publicly-sponsored carriage.

“I’m on vacation!” he yelled, his untamed mountain ‘fro looking even more carefree than usual, like stationary storm clouds suctioned to his pate.

“Oh really?” I called back and immediately felt stupid. That is the most worthless answer ever and I do it all the time, and all it does is force people to say “yeah” and what a fucking waste of time I just perpetuated.

“Yeah, look at me!” he cried, waving his hands over his body to illustrate that he was free, oh-so-free of his PAT Transit-mandated polyester-blend. His vacation wardrobe consisted of a denim vest with nothing underneath. It was at least buttoned, though. His arms were covered in tattoos, and I suddenly felt kind of perverse and voyeuristic to be seeing him in anything other than his brown Port Authority uniform, so I looked away real quick, focused on the nondescript broad behind the wheel instead. “I’ll be back in two weeks! On…” he paused for a second to think. “…the 27th! You gonna be there?”

I nodded and smiled. “I’ll be there,” I said weakly, swallowing a grimace. Yeah, of course I’ll be there. It doesn’t seem like I’ll be not taking the trolley any time in the near future.

The light turned green and we said goodbye. I continued walking to the platform, happy to know that he was returning on the 27th and I could go back to being the kind of person that a stranger is excited to see. Maybe I should use this time to put more words into my Things to Say to the Trolley Driver repertoire, other than “yay” “hi” and “I know right” (usually my response when he says something about the weather). I even called Henry to giddily brag about my encounter, to which he responded, “You’re so weird.” I think that, after 12 years, Henry still has hopes that I’m calling to tell him something amazing.

As I sat on the trolley, driven by yet another foreign-to-me face bare of any significant hair design, I wondered why my trolley driver was sitting in the backseat of the Blazer when the passenger seat was empty.

I guess when your job is to cart people around all fucking day long, sitting in the backseat might actually be your vacation.

September 2013

My commute to work has definitely gotten noisier since Trolley Driver came back from vacation last week, though the first two days were pretty quiet. So quiet, that I began to wonder if perhaps he was scolded for too generously doling out honks. Then one day, he began hyper-beeping and I thought, “OK, maybe the horn was just broke for awhile.” But then I realized he was beeping at a truck who had ignored the trolley crossing sign and nearly got T-boned by us. That was pretty damn exciting.

But by the end of the week, he was back on track, so to speak.

Please, enjoy a video I compiled of my shitty trolley ride to work:

That last part is only a tiny snippet at the maniacal beeping that goes on. For instance, there is some work being done on the tracks right after the stop I get on at, so there have been clumps of port authority workers doing their thing. As Trolley Driver passes them, he beeps—once for every single person. And then he slows to a halt and begins to jovially chide the guys in their fluorescent yellow and orange vests and they look like they’re so fucking exhausted of this charade. Man, I really love Trolley Driver!

But guess what!? There is some stupid broad who is sometimes waiting on one of the platforms downtown and he will idle there with the door open, having a conversation with her, even though she’s not getting on the trolley. This has happened numerous times since I’ve been a regular on this particular trolley, and usually the passengers will start to get vocal because hello, we have places to go! So then they say goodbye and he jingles his little trolley bell (and I don’t mean his weener, but maybe I do) and gives one last little TOOTTOOT before continuing on his way.
This happened yesterday and I realized THAT I AM JEALOUS OF THIS BROAD. Does he like her more than me!?!?

Henry pointed out that he* would probably do the same thing to me if he saw me standing on a different trolley platform. I guess he’s right. I mean, he did shout at me from the backseat of a car while he was on vacation.

*(Trolley Driver, not Henry. God, Henry would probably do a rain dance just so he could splash me upon passing.)

“It’s a Trolley Triangle,” was Henry’s response when I texted him the picture of The Platform Harlot.

I NEED TO MAKE HIM LIKE ME MORE THAN HER. Should I (have Henry) bake him cookies?! Buy him an airhorn? Get him a Best Beepin’ Trolley Driver mug? Ugh, I’ll think of something.
You know I’m going to be obsessing over this now. I should probably find out his name at some point.

One of the first, if not the first, music videos I ever saw was for David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.” My dad was really into recording (see also: taping) Friday Night Videos back in the early 80s, pre-MTV.

I still have one of his VHS tapes of homemade music video compilations; it’s labeled with a piece of masking tape and I refuse to pitch it.

“Let’s Dance” is on there.

Even as a super young kid, when I saw this video, I knew this guy was cool as fuck.

And then obviously “Labyrinth” happened. I watched that movie for the first time in third grade, at my friend Elisabeth Holtz’s house, sitting on the floor making shitty beaded jewelry and thinking, “I would not mind one bit if David Bowie kidnapped my little brother.” Legend.

In high school, I “borrowed” one of my dad’s Bowie CDs because I wanted to put “Changes” on a mix tape I was making, and then I conveniently “forgot” to put it back. That ignited a nice little fight. My dad and I were almost constantly feuding during my teen years so it was no big thing to me at all, but looking back on it now, it was pretty ironic that he was the one who introduced me to David Bowie and then there we were all those years later, fighting because of him.

I ended up just going out and buying my own Bowie CDs after that.

(With my mom’s money, haha!)

Waking up to the news of Bowie’s death this morning took my breath away. I woke up Chooch and said, “Something terrible happened…

David Bowie died.” And that’s when I realized I was crying.

Chooch shot up from his bed like Nosferatu from a coffin, and cried, “WHAT?! How!?” I told him it was cancer, and he went on a tear, motherfucking cancer up and down.

“Now there won’t ever be a sequel to ‘Labyrinth’,” he added somberly.

This feels like one of those universal deaths, the kinds that suck so hard and touch people on such a worldwide level, that we all kind of come together for a moment. It’s comforting. Especially when I open Facebook and see people mourning the same loss as me, when I didn’t really think we had much in common. David Bowie is the glittery, otherworldly, sonic thread that connects us. And there will never be another like him.

Thank you, David Bowie.

HELLO FROM 2016! I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe New Year’s Eve! Ours was low-key because I just can’t care about this particular holiday and usually I wind up with some awful end-of-the-year stomach bug so I associate NYE with toilet-hugging along with pretty much everyone else, except that I don’t have any amazing party stories to tell afterward.  Luckily, I wasn’t sick for this one, so Janna came over. The night before, she asked me what she could bring and I said “Your sports bra, because we’re going to be kpopping.” She was like “Lol OK” and I was like BUT I’M SERIOUS?!

Anyway, we watched the Pens game (we won!) and then, true to my word, I made her and Chooch do some of my favorite KpopX routines.

Henry yelling at Chooch.

Chooch making the face I hate.

Um…then we watched our least favorite YouTuber Gracie (of #cookiepizza fame) open her Christmas presents, which she would then fling to the side because she is a fucking spoiled brat. Seriously, I just can’t with that family. I mean, I’m sure I would have a gigantic head too if toy companies were just sending me boxes of things for no reason other than I somehow have amassed 500,000 YouTube subscribers for WHAT?

I’m not sure I would ever be comfortable with that.

Then we had animal mask fun!
  

I had to make Henry disinfect all of the masks first because Chooch and some of the neighbor kids have been wearing them and no just no.

It was a nice, casual, stress-free way to end a year that I didn’t hate. In fact, if Marcy hadn’t died in 2015, I might have actually been able to say that it was an almost-perfect year. But, as it is, 2015 will forever be branded in my mind as The Year We Lost Marcy. I’ll never get over it, and that’s OK.

Let’s focus on the good!

• Wendy had a baby!!
• SO.MANY.SHOWS. I promised myself that if I ever got to go back to working normal, daylight hours, I would make up for lost time by going to as many shows as possible. There were a lot that I went to this past year that I was only moderately interested in, but I still went because I COULD. What a liberating feeling. And there were many that I went to alone, which an older version of me never would have considered. But let me share with you a story of DELUXE REGRET that forever changed how I feel about saying, “I’ll just go see them next time.” It was the year 2012 and there was a little singer known as THE WEEKND who I was apeshit crazy for. He was playing a show at Mr. Small’s on a Monday night, but it was a late show and Henry didn’t want to go. The idea of going alone never occurred to me, so I passed on it, figuring I would catch him the next time he was in town. You probably know that The Weeknd practically blew up sometime after that and never again will I have the chance to see him perform in a small venue like Mr. Small’s. I blew it. So yeah, out of all the shows I went to in 2015, I think about 7 of them I went to alone. No regrets.
  • Off the top of my head, my favorites were the Kurt Travis house show, Emarosa acoustic, RIOT FEST.
    • Seriously, I will never be able to explain how many feels I have for Riot Fest. MY HEART IS IN CHICAGO.
• Our summer vacation and finally meeting Octavia!
• CHRONICA2015!!!
• Taking these pictures of Henry & Chooch. <3
• Reconnecting with my old friend Alisha, even though she lives in Arkansas now. :(
• Memorializing Marcy with friends and in ink. I’ll miss her forever, but these two things helped a lot.
• Oh my god, this whole entire thing with Bradley of Emarosa. I still think about it and get all flustered. This band is my everything.

I don’t really have any resolutions for 2016, but I do know that I would like things to continue moving along as they have been. I plan to fill 2016 with more music, more parties, and more poorly-planned vacations with my BAES, Henry and Chooch. I just want to have fun, become a KpopX instructor, and be happy. AND I HOPE THAT YOU WILL HAVE FUN AND BE HAPPY TOO! (Becoming a KpopX instructor is optional.)

Oh, and I want to go to Bledfest. Henry promised. That was my Xmas present: a promise for Bledfest.

Today, we’re going to Cleveland with Henry’s son Robbie and his girlfriend Nikki for the Craig Owens solo show at the Grog Shop. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen Craig solo and I’m excited but super nervous because he’s always been one of The Big Ones in my life, you know? Some of his words are tattooed on my arm, so to say that I think highly of him is kind of an understatement:

My all-time favorite Craig Owens experience was back in 2009 when Alisha and I went to see him, also at the Grog Shop. That was such a fun day and one of my favorite memories of Alisha, so today is making me miss her tons!

I love his solo work, but I will always love him in Chiodos the best. Chiodos was like the gateway drug into me becoming a scene kid back in 2006, so I’m sure Henry has mixed feelings about Craig too, haha. I just pointed this out to him and he did that laugh-without-mirth thing that he does when he wants everyone to know that he hates his life and nothing is amusing.

This is what I live for.

I wrote this on LiveJournal in 2005 & it’s making me laugh because not only am I exactly the same, but now I have a sidekick. It’s no wonder Henry grumbles and makes excuses every time I suggest going for a walk around the neighborhood.

****

People will tell me, “Hey, you really need a hobby.” And you know, I often find myself agreeing, as a means to excuse whatever odd personality quirk of mine that’s in the hot seat. But I was thinking about it this morning, and goddammit – I have tons of hobbies!

I like walking through cemeteries while making off-color jokes about dead people. I like stalking people of otherwise uninteresting stature. I like eating uncooked ravioli and tortellini. I like making up new names for my cats (I just changed Nicotina’s name to Breakfast Nook). I like making pets out of fruits and vegetables. I like to walk down dark streets, alone, while pretending that a murderer is after me.

So maybe my hobbies aren’t of your average crafty/sporty variety, but I’ve learned to embrace them with every fibre of my being. But I left out my favorite: Annoying Henry. I live for the satisfaction of pushing him to the point where he inhales through clenched teeth and widens his eyes in a furious glower.

Annoying Henry can take place anywhere, really: in the car, on a plane, in the house, while he’s cooking, at the grocery store, in a cemetery. But my favorite time to push the Henryific buttons is during our nightly walks. Add snow to the equation and you’re in for one night of flawless agitation.

I was fairly calm and collected yesterday, so Henry didn’t hesitate when I suggested bundling up for some neighborhood ambling. I waited until we had been walking for a good ten minutes before springing into my antics. That’s when the snow throwing began.

Henry never flinched as each ball of packed snow slammed into the back of his coat; his pace never faltered and he continued along the sidewalk, hands in pocket and head facing straight ahead. I spied a discarded beer bottle jutting out of the snow and reached down to pluck it from its nest. Henry, without so much as a quick glance thrown over his shoulder, matter-of-factly said, “Put it down.” How did he know? He does this psychic eye routine all the time. Here’s a quote from an entry about cemetery carousing:

So this lady was there with her dog, right? They went into the woods. They were back there for awhile and I said, “Hey, do you think that lady — ”
Hoover: “No.”
Me: “You didn’t even know what I was going –”
Hoover: “Do I think she’s having sex with her dog? No.”

HOW DID HE KNOW!?

Twenty minutes without provoking a reaction can really start to nullify the fun-having. I remedied this by forgetting the snow and moving on to bigger and better tools of attention. I dropped out of sight and while Henry unknowingly continued walking down the sidewalk, I began the laborious task of chiseling off a hunk of ice from a snow bank using only my shoe. Relentlessly stubbing my toe was a small price to pay for the exhileration of ambushing Henry. I crept back onto the sidewalk and, stooping down low, caught up close enough to whale the sharp block of ice-encrusted snow at his feet.  The chunk of ice skidded into the ground right behind Henry, erupting into a billion frozen shards and crystals, like a bag of uncooked rice exploding onto a linoleum floor, as the pieces of ice and snow swirled and clattered around his feet. And his gait never quavered. How he does it, I’ll never know.

Realizing that this plan of attack was no good, I accepted the fact that it was time to resort to the one thing that gets him every time – my voice. I caught up to him and fell into place at his side, and began tugging on his arm. “I’m bored. I’m hungry. I want hot chocolate. Do you love me? Have you ever been in jail? Wanna break into that house? Wanna steal that car? Who do you like more, Bobcat Goldtwait or Kato Kaelin?”

It wasn’t working. Time to dupe him. We turned off the main road that we had been walking along and onto a quiet street lined with houses. It was dark with very little through-traffic. I stopped walking.

“Let’s make out,” I urgently demanded.
“Why?” Henry was suspicious. Good.
“Because it’s so romantical out here! There’s the snow and trees…and look! There’s one of those Dippers!” I exclaimed, pointing toward the sky.
“That’s Orion, you asshole.”

Dipper or not, I had him right where I wanted him. Moving in for an embrace, I quickly slipped my snow-encased gloves down the collar of his shirt. Finally, I elicited the reaction I had been gunning for the whole time. He forcibly removed my icy gloves from his chest and shouldered past me. Acting hurt, I dejectedly said, “I just wanted to be close to you. Won’t you at least hold my hand?”

I really hate it when my plans backfire. He made like he was about to acquiesce with the hand holding, and took my hand in his. Only, this wasn’t what hand holding was supposed to feel like! Burning pain raced up my arm and I could hear the popping and snapping of knuckles and cartilage. Not ready to bow out so early into the fight, I sucked in a lungful of air and bellowed, “HELP ME HELP!!” We both froze in our places and looked up and down the street, waiting for houses to light up in vigilance. Realizing that he had been backed up against a wall, he flung my hand away from him and mumbled, “Why can’t you just walk? Just walk.”

And then he bought me a sundae at McDonald’s, but he refused to walk up to the drive thru like I suggested. Can’t win ’em all.

From the very first moment I first heard Dance Gavin Dance almost 9 years ago, I was instantly smitten. I was already neck-deep in the post-hardcore scene, but this just sounded so different to me. I obsessed hard and it quickly became the official soundtrack of 2008-2009, to the point where Henry had become numb to it. Through numerous line-up changes (including three singers!), I have never given up on them. So when they announced a few months ago that they’re celebrating their 10 years as a band with a tour, I knew I had to go even though Jonny Craig’s band, Slaves, was going to be there and I absolutely cannot stand them (I actually despise the other guys in that band more than I hate Jonny Craig, so you know it’s real). I felt like a hypocrite though, since I’ve said many times that I wasn’t going to support a single thing JC does anymore, but then Kara reasoned that I shouldn’t feel that way about this, because I love DGD so much and JC is a part of their history. So, I decided that I would go and just deal with it.

And I’m so happy that I did! It was mind-exploding. In addition to Slaves, Strawberry Girls and A Lot Like Birds were also on the tour, which meant all three DGD singers plus one former guitarist could potentially perform together. I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if I missed that! And I am a super huge Kurt Travis fan kid, so getting to hear him sing with ALLB and then DGD in one night was almost too much for me to handle. It’s been over 5 years since I’ve seen him perform with DGD so I was in sheer Heaven.

And seriously, this 15 second Instavid from ALLB’s set gives me unlimited heart-flops and goosebumps:

DGD’s set started out with their current singer, Tilian, who I do actually love a ton and he has really breathed new life into DGD. I love the direction they have been going with him and I’m happy to see that he’s survived through two albums so far!

With Tilian, they played some songs from Instant Gratification and Acceptance Speech:

• Stroke God, Millionaire
• On the Run
• Strawberry Swisher, Pt. 3
• Death of a Strawberry
• Jiggler
• Variation

The crowd was pretty great all night, but it was nuts for DGD. Especially anytime Jon Mess starts screaming. He is fucking beloved and more than anything, he is the one I would want to meet someday even though this entire band intimidates me so badly. I just think he’s a literal genius, 100%. Even HENRY likes Jon Mess and has said more than once that he’s his favorite DGD member, past or present. For Henry to even seriously answer that question is a huge deal. It was fun watching him do a slow clap after every song, too. HENRY IS A FAN.

After Variation, they left the stage while the Instant Gratification banner fell, revealing another one with a giant “X” made from all of their album covers. And then everyone returned, with Kurt Travis and Zachary Garren replacing Tilian and the current touring guitarist from Eidola. IT WAS FUCKING AMAZING.

With Kurt, they played:

• Tree Village
• Rock Solid

• And I Told Them I Invented Times New Roman
• Robot With Human Hair 2 1/2

This video isn’t from the Cleveland show, OH WELL. The only one I could find from that one was terrible.

I still don’t like Jonny Craig for personal reasons that admittedly have nothing to do with his music and I’m not sorry for that, but I have to say that it was pretty amazing getting to relive some of my favorite moments of DGD history, and especially hearing this song, it was just unbelievable. Discovering DGD really changed the course of my musical tastes and I will forever attribute that to Jonny Craig, because it was his fucking stupid golden voice that hooked me from the very first second and forced me to pay attention. DGD definitely isn’t a band for everyone and the only reason I even gave them that first play was based on their band name. So yes, sometimes judging a band by their name pays off.

• Uneasy Hearts Weigh the Most
• We Own the Night

I remember seeing ALLB on tour with DGD a few years back and thinking that for sure Kurt would come out and sing “Uneasy Hearts…” with them, since that song has dual-singers, but instead, Donovan from Hail the Sun did the honors. But on this night, Jonny, Kurt, AND Tilian all took turns singing it and my head and heart could barely handle the fact that ALL DGD SINGERS WERE ON THE SAME STAGE.

The show ended with just Tilian-era DGD blowing the roof off the joint with “We Own the Night.” I just wish that Dayshell hadn’t been on the tour so that maybe DGD would have played longer, giving Kurt and Jonny more stage time. Also, I hate Slaves and literally stood with my back toward the stage during their entire set* (which, by some grace of God, was cut short) but I understand why they were there, at least. It made sense to bring out the past singers’ current bands, and Strawberry Girls, but as far as I’m aware, there isn’t a real connection with Dayshell and DGD.

*(I’m not going to lie, Jonny sounded fine during his set with Slaves but the rest of the band sounds like a tinny landslide of shit-filled pots and pans. I’m not even saying  that because I hate those douchebags. They honestly just aren’t a good band and it sounded like they were just playing the music for the same song 4 times.)

But oh for fuck’s sake, I just can’t stop replaying this night over and over in my head and smiling and crying and then thanking Henry for taking me to Cleveland on a work night and then buying me this sweet ass screen print!!

DGD is in my Forever Top 5 and I can’t tell you how many times a day I think about the future tattoo I’m going to get to honor them. But it has to be epic. With strawberries and robots with human hair and the art of Mattias Adolfson (with his permission, of course). Because this band has made the music that is fucking everything to me.

I’m still wearing my House of Blues wristband. LE SIGH.

When I was little, there was some broad named Maureen who was the local notary public, and as a kid, I had no fucking clue what that even meant, but that my dad would openly call her a dish.

I didn’t know what that meant that either. I mean, my mom explained it, sure. “It means he thinks she’s hot,” she sighed, rolling her eyes. I always thought it was a stupid way of saying that someone is hot.

It wasn’t until we got Trudy that I truly understood the sentiment behind the term. Because good Lord, my friends, my fucking Xmas mannequin is a goddamn dish.

Especially now that she’s all metallic green and draped in glowing lights and glittering garland. She is a fucking BABE SUPREME.

Finally, after nearly 20 years of pining for a mannequin to pile Christmas presents beneath, I finally had one in my house, my dream was being realized after all this time. No more Christmas trees, real or artificial, that made me feel like I was being untrue to myself. It might seem like a joke to you, but I’m sure there are psychotherapists out there who could draw some conclusions, connect from metaphorical dots, and give my addiction a name.

But for now, let’s just call what it is: my time to finally get down with a holiday like the rest of you.

And finally, Saturday evening was trimming time. I invited Janna and Corey because who better to celebrate the unveiling of Douglas Fir’s hot sister than the two people who are like, “No, this is normal. I mean, there will be wine though, right?”

Corey was already wound up before he even got here. Sadly, Janna saw this on Instagram (I THOUGHT SHE RARELY CHECKED IT!) so she was on to Corey’s plan. Oh well. There will be other times to lace her ‘Tussin.

I happily set out Angie’s cookie dough truffles, and Corey mistakenly thought that I cared enough to get them specifically for him and Janna.

“Pfffft, no!” I laughed. “Angie had extras and gave them to me after breakfast today.” Corey didn’t seem to care either way, because they were delicious and he kept making me text her to tell her.

And then it was, “TELL ANGIE I’M EATING ANOTHER ONE! HERE, SEND HER A PICTURE!”

Meanwhile, Corey’s contributions to the night was a pack of Toasty peanut butter crackers. He shared, at least.

Henry didn’t even have the boxes of decoration ready to go! So I had to berate him in front of our guests while he flared his nostrils before disappearing into the basement to fetch our whopping two whole boxes of Christmas decor.

We’re really into holidays.

While Henry untangled lights, I reminisced over the first time we bought a tree for the house, when Chooch was 4. I had never bothered previously because for me, it was No Mannequin, Why Bother? But then this awful thing called SOCIETAL PRESSURE happened and I though it was The Right Thing To Do now that I had a kid in preschool.  My mom actually bought a live tree for us from Home Dept and brought over some of my old baby ornaments and a shit ton of tinsel and then peaced out before Henry had a chance to complain. It’s hard to remember back to a time when my mom was still a mom, and that was definitely one of the last happy memories she gave me.

My friend Alisha came over to help decorate that year, and when I realized that we didn’t have a tree topper, I cut a star out of a disposable baking tin and then taped it to a McDonald’s straw.

I’ve been using it every year (except for the one year when I swapped it out for a Jonny Craig Angel topper, ugh) but I had to replace the McDonald’s straw two years ago.

I sent Alisha a picture of the tree topper (she lives in Arkansas now) and she was like, “Gee, you know that you can get an actual tree topper at Walmart, right?” But even though I’m not poor anymore, I will never throw this away! It has too much sentimental value.

Anyway, After Henry strung up the lights, I strangled her with one strand of garland and then basically pawned the rest off on everyone else because decorating shit makes me tired and the hockey game was on and I wanted to drink more wine.

The phalanges came in handy.

HANDY.

Earlier in the day, she was in the dining room. I forgot she was there, turned too fast, and got slapped by a hard green hand right in the face. It hurt so bad but I was like, “Trudy, I can’t hate you” so I tried to just laugh along with Henry, who unfortunately witnessed the abuse.

I put a Henry ornament right up in the crotch.

Speaking of crotch, I considered dressing her in a pair of granny panties, but laziness overruled the idea, so bottom-nude it is.

My dream is to get Henry’s mom JUDY to pose with TRUDY for this year’s Xmas card.

“Is grandma going to have her pants off, too?” Chooch asked.

“Oh god, no!” Henry cried.
  

And then Henry reluctantly took our picture. Chooch couldn’t decide if he was happy or not.

FATHER XMAS.

Corey and Chooch both aspire to be Vine famous. Chooch made this Vine without any of us paying attention and then Corey saw it and was like YOU TOTALLY HAVE THE VINE HUMOR DOWN! and now I think he’s trying to be his agent or coach or something. I don’t know.

Making another Vine.

Meanwhile, Chooch taught himself how to play the Tetris music on his keyboard, so it was the perfect lunacy soundtrack for Corey’s incessant gushing over the truffles. Over and over, faster and faster.  Our house is literally onomatopoeia for “pandemonium.”

You guys know he secretly loves this shit.  
Trudy from a stalker’s POV.

You can hear Henry gruffly bitching at Chooch in the background. Something about crackers.

Henry in his typical state.

Everything feels more homey now that Trudy’s around.

I struggle every year when the holiday season rolls around. Some years are easier than others. This past Thanksgiving, even though I chose not to do anything, was just another reminder of how abnormal things became after the passing of my grandfather. Most years, I try to fight back by going out of my way to celebrate with friends and the few family I have in my life.  But now that Trudy is here, I finally feel excited again. It’s like a new beginning! A new tradition born! THE MANNEQUIN THAT SAVED CHRISTMAS!

I woke up the next day more hungover than I was that time we dyed Easter eggs in 2011. So…total success.

In related news, I couldn’t stop thinking about Notary Publics last night in bed.

“What are they even?” I asked Henry, who was about 85% asleep by then. “All they do is like stamp shit right?”

And then: “Do you think I could be one?”

“Sure. Be whatever,” Henry murmured into his pillow.

Saturday was full of ups and downs. Weather-wise, it was stupidly beautiful for mid-November: blue skies and 60s. But it was in this unseasonable weather that we finally buried Marcy in the Fallen Timber pet cemetery with our other cats: Speck, Don, and Willie. You might remember that she passed away at the end of March. Henry took her body to the cemetery right after that, paid the rest of the amount for her plot, and was told by the Western PA Humane Society that we would be contacted later on in the spring, that the ground had to thaw, etc etc etc.

In the meantime, they happily deposited our check.

Sometime in May, my friend Debbie alerted me to a series of complaints left on the pet cemetery’s Facebook page. Turns out, the Humane Society sold the facility RIGHT AFTER we gave them Marcy to a woman named Rise. She also runs a cat sanctuary, but had her eye on their facility for years and wanted it to supplement the sanctuary of non-adoptable cats she was already caring for. Her plan is to use it for a shelter for animals that can be adopted, but she was basically left with a real shit storm to sort through. She had no idea that the cemetery was part of the deal, and the Humane Society left her with broken burial equipment, a filing cabinet full of records on index cards, and a box of headstones that people paid years ago to have installed on their pets’ graves.

Every time Henry called the Humane Society to complain, they directed him to Rise who was near tears every time they talked because she felt so helpless and completely sorry for us. Apparently, there were several other animals left behind that needed buried as well, so we weren’t alone.

Long story short: Rise rules and the Humane Society sucks. The mess that they left her with was finally sorted out, and she called to tell us that she and her volunteers were finally equipped to bury Marcy. One of her volunteers told us that when they called the Department of Agriculture to come out and inspect the property, that the Humane Society had been operating that place for years without having a license! WTF, Humane Society?!

For as traumatic as the whole situation was, I have to say that because of her overwhelming compassion and the kindness of the volunteer who accompanied us to the burial site, this was the most peaceful funerals of all 4 of my cats. I will always be grateful for that, and for Rise’s refusal to give up on the cemetery. It really is such a pivotal part of the mourning process, and I’m relieved that it’s still available for those who find comfort there — and it’s in much better condition now, too.

Of course, Marcy wouldn’t let this go down without one last hitch: they dug the wrong hole. I have four plots all in a row, and her hole was dug on another plot. Rise was mortified. “These poor people! Oh, I can’t even look at them!” she cried to the volunteer who had come down from the hill to deliver the news.

The grave digger had left to get more fuel for his machinery, so we assured Rise it was fine and that we would just go and get lunch and then come back. We had waited this long, what was one more hour?

My friend Octavia made me laugh about it though by pointing out that even from beyond, Marcy was still wreaking havoc. So typical of Marcy!

We went down the road a bit to Eagle’s Landing, a causal restaurant that’s next to the Rostraver Airport runway, where Chooch announced to the waitress, “I’d like to order an appetizer…” and then almost as an afterthought, “…for the table.” Henry was like, “Oh really? Are you buying?”

And that’s how we got to enjoy a provolone wheel. Thanks for your generosity, Chooch.

Man Eats Coleslaw

Kid Eats Pie

That table of older gentlemen behind Chooch talked candidly about ISIS and I felt such fear. I kept shushing Henry and Chooch every time they would have the audacity to speak over top of this table of men 20 feet away, because I didn’t want to miss anything. Like it was Carrie Matheson and Peter Quinn sitting there, hunched over lemon meringue pies and coffee, discussing field orders.

We watched an older couple pay for their lunch, get inside their little jet-thing, and then perform a wobbly take-off for all of us diners to gape at.

The food was whatever, but we still had a great time, mostly at Henry’s expense. It felt kind of weird to be cracking up over meringue and rural airports, considering we were about to head back and watch Marcy being lowered into her final resting place. I’m so glad that I didn’t have to go through this alone, and that Henry pretty much handled the entire ordeal on his own because he knows I would have just drowned on my uncontrollable waterfall of tears and then landed up in prison after making a series of sloppy threats against the Humane Society.

OMGpayphoneLOL.

After lunch, we went back to the cemetery and said goodbye to Marcy one final time. It sucked, there really is no better word for it, and I’m glad that it’s finally over.

“I just wanted her to be with the other cats,” I said to Henry in the car afterward, sniffling.

“Well, now she is,” Henry replied, patting my leg.  “And she probably hates you for it.”

I pretty much just clung to Henry for the rest of the weekend.

Last winter, I suffered through this bizarre episode where everyone around me accidentally had me convinced that Boz Scaggs didn’t exist, but then he started popping everywhere and I felt a small victory. Hats off to the universe for backing me on Boz Scaggs’ existence.

Thank god I often have old people radio stations playing in my bedroom, else I may not have known that Boz was going ON TOUR and that there was a Pittsburgh show! This was less than a week after I got a new succulent and named him Boz Scaggs; not trying to say I’m magic but I’M MAGIC.

I looked up tickets right away and my heart sank a little when I saw that they were pretty expensive — starting at $67. You have to remember that the shows I go to are for relatively small bands and I’m usually paying less than $20 for a ticket.

But you guys — fucking Boz Scaggs. He played a role in my childhood, and 2015 seems to be The Year of Sentimental Shows for me (Mike + the Mechanics, Howard Jones, SNOOP DOGG?!), so I knew that I had to go, and I also knew it meant going alone because we’re not made of money, you guys. I know it’s shocking that my blog isn’t pulling in the big bucks. But then someone bought two paintings from me on Etsy, which equaled the cost of one Boz Scaggs ticket + fees almost down to the cent. If that’s not fate stepping in…

So I was able to splurge and buy a ticket for the center seat in the first row of the balcony (there were no good seats left on the floor, and I prefer the balcony anyway), which is how I wound up spending what might have been an ordinary Sunday evening at the Carnegie Library Music Hall with several hundred of my elder-mates.

I arrived early enough to go to the “bar area” —which is just a table of Barefoot wine varietals  set up in the library— and bought a plastic cup of cheap Zinfandel. I stood alone, laughing to myself, sipping the wine, and texting Henry.

“I am the youngest one here by a very large margin. People are staring at me suspiciously!”

Henry’s response was his famously succinct “LOL.”

There was a teenage girl there with her dad and she looked PISSED.

I wasn’t sure what appropriate “Going to the Boz Scaggs Show” attire consisted of, so I just wore jeans and my favorite Lauren Conrad sweater. I realized immediately that I was just fine with what I was wearing, right smack in the middle of Steelers-sweatshirted Yinzers and over-dressed Big Night Out broads, like this one old woman in a long fur vest who almost fell thanks to the voracity of her seat-dancing during Lowdown, and an old bitch who looked like she was at the fucking opera. Her husband was dressed like he just walked off a yacht to the tune of “What a Fool Believes.” Aging yuppies are amazing to watch.

There were a lot of blazers, loafers, and yes Alyson—a sea of slacks! One woman in her 60s had on a sheer white blouse, and I mean SEE-THRU, with nothing more than a black bra underneath. She was sitting in the front row off to the side, and I sure hope Boz was able to see her from where he stood onstage.

After downing my $5 wine, I made my way upstairs and handed an elderly usher my ticket.

“Oh, this is the BEST seat up here!” he said enthusiastically.

That’s one of the perks of going solo — there’s always that one lone vacancy in the middle of the sold-out seats!

“Don’t throw any of your clothes over the balcony!” he laughed, and then I started cracking up too, at the thought of old ladies throwing bras on stage for Boz.

My seat was right smack in the middle of the first row of the balcony: a perfect view, 100% unadulterated by fat, bobbing heads and wanton usage of cell phones. (However, the Library Music Hall ushers are quick to smack down on recording—pictures are fine, though. This makes me happy, because even though I do love to post Instavids at shows, I can’t stand it when people hold up their phones for the entire show. I like to grab my 15-second clip for sentimental reasons and then shove my phone back in my pocket.)

There was no opener, so I just relaxed in my seat between two sets of old couples and enjoyed the people-watching. I don’t know why, but I expected to see at least one person wearing culottes for some reason and I was really sad when that sighting didn’t happen.

For the record, the only reason I know what culottes are is because my idiot MOM made me wear them in elementary school, because nothing adds to frumpiness like wide-legged knee-length shorts paired with ANKLE SOCKS AND MOCCASSINS, THANKS MOM.

Boz and his band came out a little after 8:00 and the night of blue-eyed soul and soft rock jams. His backing band was incredibly jazzy — there were even a few sax solos! This pleased the old people greatly and much cheering and exploding applause occurred throughout the night.  I was happy for these people to be out enjoying an artist that they loved, instead of wasting away at home, eating liver and onions and watching QVC. I hope that I’m still going to shows when I’m old.

Boz played a lot of stuff from his new album, none of which I knew, but that didn’t make it any less enthralling. I love his voice so much, and that band of his was FIRE. His back-up singer, Monet, was a show-stealer though. Halfway through the set, he said, “This is my favorite part of the night, when I get to introduce the talented Monet. But I just have to tell you: better buckle your seat belts.”

Boz took a step back while Monet blew our faces off with her rendition of “Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do).” She can SANG, ya’ll. Every last arthritic body shot up from their seats to give her a standing ovation and I was like, “FUCK YES I was here for that!” Totally following her on Instagram now.

Boz played three of my favorites: Lowdown, Lido Shuffle, and motherfucking JOJO, which he prefaced by saying he wrote with David Foster and I got really giddy because I was obsessed with David Foster in the early 90s when he hosted an informercial for something that I no longer remember but I feel like it was some sort of radio or stereo system? Google is not helping me.

Sadly,  “Look What You’ve Done To Me” was not in the set list for Boz’s last show of the tour, and this pains me because I noticed it was played at some of the other shows, ugh. I love that song! There was, however, another slow jam that he played that I didn’t really recognize, but it gave me the “Sitting In Pappap’s Kitchen” feels and I started openly weeping, which should shock no one as I always cry at least once at every show.

(You should have seen me at the Eisley and Copeland show last Friday. Two bands that make me sentimental to begin with, playing on a night that a Paris concert venue was just attacked by terrorists, and then someone gets engaged on stage!? My face was slick.)

Boz ended the last of several encores by 9:45 and said one final good night. I’m not used to getting out of a show so early, but I didn’t mind — now I’d have time to go home and watch The Walking Dead before it got spoiled for me!

***

What a great fucking show. Boz is like, 71 now, so I’m happy that I got the chance to see him. Even though the very next morning, I pulled something in my back when I was brushing my hair! Tell me that’s not a side effect of being immersed in a crowd of grandparents for a whole evening. It still hurts, too, FYI.

We were talking about the show at work and Todd said, “I knew it was real when Glenn said he knew who Boz Scaggs is.” And then Amber was like, “Oh yeah, how was the…..Bose…..Scaggs concert?” She will never be able to say his name right!

Life is so weird. I started the week having water squirted in my face by Beau Bokan at the Blessthefall show, and now I was ending it in what could have been the set of a new Cocoon movie. BOZ SCAGGS BRINGS THE LIFE FORCE.

(Ugh, now I’m thinking about how dreamy Steve Guttenberg is.)

This afternoon, I went to the Hollywood Theatre for a viewing of the La Dispute documentary “Tiny Dots.” It was nice to have some time alone, in the dark, some time to be still and quiet and just decompress, phone tucked away in my purse. The last few weeks have been exhausting. October in general was so exhausting, it was hard to enjoy it at times.

I had a ticket for the most recent show La Dispute played in Pittsburgh. It was sold out and I was really looking forward to it. And then that ended up being the day that Marcy died. I couldn’t even get out of bed that day, not even for a show. So, I didn’t go. I think that was only the second time in my life that I had a ticket for a show and didn’t use it.

It still hurts, you know? One day last week was National Cat Day and I’m sorry, but I had to stop looking at Facebook and Instagram that day because it was too hard. I didn’t want to see pictures of your cats.

But watching this film kind of inspired me. I left there wanting to write again.

I can’t remember when I last wrote something that wasn’t just a blog post or a product description on Etsy. Most days I feel like that ship has sailed, and I don’t feel like swimming after it.

(That song up there, though. My god. Even if you don’t care for this kind of music, you could probably relate to those words. So many of Jordan’s phrases just leave me stunned.)

I’m not trying to say I’m some weirdo 50-year-old man living in a letterman jacket, but my high school experience was pretty awesome and I’m one of those rare breeds who genuinely enjoys reminiscing about those lost years. Of course there was drama and heartbreak and weird family bullshit, but the amount of fun times, crazy experiences, and really interesting friends I had definitely outweighs the bad. Some might say I even peaked in high school! (My personality and social skills have been on the fast decline ever since.)

Back in high school, my core group of friends consisted of Lisa, Angie and Martha (née Melissa). Given our first names, the obvious moniker for our crew was L.A.M.E. There were some boy members too, like Russ, Evan, Lawson, and Justin, but they weren’t cool enough to change the acronym. Girls rule, boys drool, obvi. Some of my best high school memories involve these people, and I always start to get just a tad bit nostalgic for those days in autumn, because let me tell you: we knew how to do haunted house hopping right.

Lisa, Jason, Jason, Angie, Jason. I believe this was at Phantoms in the Park.

Henry LOVES my LAME stories. J/k. He rolls his eyes at them pretty hard and then smirks but this is just because he’s jealous that I actually had friends in high school.

I loved being part of a group. I loved it so much that I even made a newsletter for us! Granted it was short-lived, but at least I made the effort to keep our group abreast of each others comings and goings. (I even rolled up each individual newsletter like a scroll! I don’t half-ass these things, guys.)

Lisa and Angie helped me get settled into my first apartment in January of 1998, when we were 18.

Sometimes we would let other people hang out with us too, like in this case, my friend Shawn.

I would usually invite That One Person to my parties that completely killed the vibe, which is why everyone always looks like they’re at a funeral in my party pictures. Typically That One Person was someone that I had just met in a chat room or literally invited in off the street. At this particular party, I distinctly remember it was my Iraqi next door neighbor Abdul, who was in the States to go to PIA – Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics, and who my mom wanted me to call the FBI tip line about years later because she’s a racial profiler, but I low-key kind of wondered about him myself.

Anyway, my point is, these guys were used to my awkward social gatherings yet they still came around because Tru Franz, yo.

Seriously considering the ceiling Slinkie motif for my current home.

I lost touch with most of the LAME crew after high school, except for Lisa. Barring a few hiatuses due to geography and life in general, Lisa and I have managed to maintain a pretty consistent friendship. (It always blows my mind when someone willingly sticks by me for longer than three years! That’s usually the shelf life of my friendships because I’m so stupidly annoying and whiny and melodramatic and probably you could add a lot worse things to that list depending on which person you dig up from my friend graveyard.) But then over the summer, Angie posted an old group photo of LAME + our silent members on Facebook and it spawned a comment thread full of nostalgia and “I miss you”s and “We should”s. So I sent a group message to our crew, minus Martha who lives in Florida now but hopefully she will visit soon, and Russ who isn’t on Facebook. We all agreed that meeting up would be fantastic, and Lawson said that Russ was on board with it too.

But, you know how that goes.

That conversation wound up dead in the water, but then a few Friday nights ago, I was bored at work (Friday night late shift, you guys; the worst) so I resurrected the convo and BAM – plans were made to meet up at our old Denny’s hot spot less than a week later.  All day long, I was so excited for this to happen. I hadn’t seen Angie in over 10 years, and it had been even longer since I saw both Lisa and Angie together! Probably at one of my awkward parties in 1998. Lawson had to unfortunately back out the day of, but Lisa and Angie made it. I even snagged the corner booth in the back for us because I got there too early. (Story of my life.)

The level of comfort I felt was off the charts. We talked about our current lives and cracked up over old English project memories and there was definitely some gossip thrown in for good measure. Something terrible happened though! I always pride myself on having the best memory out of everyone I’m friends with—probably because if I write every goddamn thing down, and back in high school, I was VIDEOTAPING everything too. One might say I’m a little obsessed with preservation. Out of all of my friends, Lisa is probably the worst when it comes to remembering things. Sometimes I’ll call her and say, “Guess who I saw from high school?!” and then it’s like we’re on a really boring game show where I’m trying to help her guess who for a brand new washer and dryer. Anyway, on this night, we got on the aforementioned subject about how I was always pulling in strangers off the street, etc, and she said, “Do you remember when I was with you and you picked up that hitchhiker?”

Now, I definitely had a hitchhiker problem for several years, this sick compulsion to pull over and cart them around, and at one point it got so bad that I would actually drive around on highways SEEKING THEM OUT because death wish, I had one. But I didn’t remember Lisa ever being with me! She kept talking about it though, about how pissed she was, how it happened on the side of 79, and it started coming back to me. I began having a vague recollection of a blue-collared man getting in my car and then Lisa and I having a mild argument about it afterward.

Yes, that sounds about right.

And then Angie brought some letters and post cards I had sent her over the years and started reading them out loud. Lisa was like one gigantic eye roll at this point and I was fucking loving it. In case you were wondering, I haven’t changed much.

In 1993, I was in love with a man in Morocco and the sad part is that I remember this VERY CLEARLY and even the fact that Inner Circle’s “Sweat” was playing on the radio in the shop he was working in when I first saw him, what the fuck is wrong with me. And the waiter in the hotel in Capri, 1997? Yup, remember him too. Sorry, Henry!

And I still make my hearts like that, except mostly only with one strike-thru now, in case you were wondering.

Angie started reading this one letter I wrote her right after senior year, where I tell her in painstaking detail what my job at Olan Mills Portrait Studio entails and then SLICKLY delve right into a SALES PITCH. OMG I am definitely the same person. I try to trick Glenn into buying a painting from me pretty much 8x a week.

“Oh my god, Erin, what are you even writing about?” Angie cried, continuing to slough her way through my handwriting circle-jerk. Honestly, I was just in love with my handwriting and would start transcribing the ingredients of my omnipresent Slim Fast meal bars if I started to run out of original thoughts to scribble. And then she paused and asked, “I don’t know what letter this is…” I looked to where Angie was pointing and with that faux-exasperation that everyone loves to hate about me, I sighed, “That’s part of a PARENTHESIS, Angie. GOD!”

“Well, I didn’t know that!” she laughed. “There’s this weird line through it—-”

“Because that’s how I do it, Angie!”

Lisa was just like, “Oh my god.”

I get dramatic sometimes. Sometimes Lisa’s presence exacerbates that and 1996 Erin wants to come out and play (and whine and pout and cry and be bossy). It’s a familiarity thing.

LOL at my Precious Moments stationery and “A-Sexy Nemov” giving me the BEST birthday present when he took his shirt off at the Gymnastics Gala, OMG. I think this was Summer Olympic mania in 1996. I texted this to Christy and neither of us have distinct memories of loving this random Russian gymnast, but we both agreed that it sounds pretty typical of us. Especially the “A-Sexy” part.

We totally overstayed our welcome at Denny’s and I loved every minute of it! Now we just need to drag Martha back from Florida and convince Lawson and Russ (and Evan if he’s not too cool for us now that he owns a tattoo shop — the same place I got my Marcy tattoo, actually!) that we won’t annoy them if they come hang out with us. (I mean, I can’t really promise that.) I think they should all come to my house and help me give Henry more gray hairs.

P.S. The Vegetarian Dinner Party of 1996. NEVER FORGET.