I miss my work anniversary every year. I knew it was coming up and thought it was April 8th for sure, but then April 8th came and went and I forgot all about it. Just now I was inspired to check my blog to see if I ever posted on my first day. Of course I did, because that’s the shit that I do. I also learned that my work anniversary was April 5th, not the 8th. I also found a blog post where I talked about how obsessed I was with the beautiful Law Firm restroom, because it was still brand new at that point (and not just in a “new-to-me” way; the Firm had just moved into that newly renovated building two weeks before I started working there so everything was sparkly and shiny and there were CANDY BOWLS ON THE TABLE BY THE KITCHEN which is how they lured me in). Don’t worry, that bathroom is disgusting as shit nowadays.

Anyway, please enjoy my first blog post from The Law Firm. And my finger was “broken” due to a Jillian Michaels injury that morning. That was one of the first conversations I had with Barb, explaining to her why I kept wincing every time she handed me papers. So…not much has changed. (And I did become friends with those two girls, but BARB ended up being my first friend. Of all the people! Anyway, the reason I even excitedly mentioned that in a blog post from 2010 was because I wasn’t used to working at a place with normal people that I could actually imagine hanging out with. People who work late shift doing data entry are a….how do you say….special breed. And that was what I had been doing for awhile before getting this job. So no, I wasn’t interested in becoming friends with middle aged women with mullets who wore Crocs and Country Jamboree t-shirts to work.)

****

I’m at my new job! With a broken finger! Henry will have you believe it’s just bruised but what does he know? He thought Maunday was a misspelling for Monday ( SO DID ALISHA) until I opened my big bag of Biblical knowledge on his ass. (I’m still galloping around town on my high horse about that.)

Anyway. My desk area is bare. Stark. Inadequate. But at least I didn’t set off any alarms today.

Already there are two girls who I can imagine being friends with, which is pretty much where friendships start and end with me oh ho ho ho.

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Ugh, look at my dopey face.

I got my first tattoo in 1997. I was 18 and obviously put zero thought into it, but, you know, OMG I’m 18 and can get a tattoo now! I was still in a relationship with Psycho Mike at the time and we decided that we would get our first tattoos together so that we could have yet another terrible memory to put in our stupid scrapbook.

(YES WE KEPT A SCRAPBOOK TOGETHER. It was awful. One page was an actual list of all the times we were approached by cops while banging in the park at night. Keeping it classy, always.)

In 1997, tattoos were entirely too affordable for asshole teenagers. And even if I didn’t have an American Express card that my mommy paid the bill on, I made enough at my crappy telemarketing job at Olan Mills to be able to waltz into some tattoo shop and pick the dumbest piece of flash out of the binder and think to myself, “Yes, this is what I want to carry around with me, deep within my flesh, everyday for the rest of my life.” Some stupid heart getting shot in the asshole with an arrow, it can be yours for $65.

I was drunk in this picture, but I sadly can’t use ‘inebriation’ as the reason I got such a dumb tattoo. And then once I got older and it started to blur, that’s when it really looked fantastic. Most people thought it was a farting heart. Because that’s what shitty tattoos turn into you guys. Farts.

But even worse for me, it wasn’t what it looked like, but what it represented. Anytime I would catch a glimpse of it in the mirror, especially these last few years, I would be reminded of a shitty relationship. It just made me so sad, but the idea of trying to get it covered up seemed so daunting. After 15 years, it was basically just this oblong red blob on my arm and I couldn’t imagine someone trying to cover it up.

During the summer of 2012, Andrea was here visiting and she decided she wanted to get a tattoo. She has like a million of them and I was so worried about taking her to a crappy place, but I knew that my friend Stacey’s brother was really good, so we went to his place. Of course he wasn’t there (turns out, he had left that place), but Andrea was like, “Fuck it I want teeth on my wrists” and asked one of the available artists—Josh—if he had time to bow to her whims. He did, and he turned out to be really awesome, so thank you for not giving my friend a shitty Pittsburgh souvenir.

I showed him my dumb heart and he said he could cover it up easily, but of course I had zero dollars and told him I would get back to him once I found a lucrative corner to stand at.

A year passed by and I randomly found Josh on Instagram and totally fell in love with his style. Finally saved up some money and made a consultation appointment in January. Basically, I was like, “I’m obsessed apples, and the quote ‘the sweeter the apple, the blacker the core’ applies to me.” Two sittings later, and now I have apples on my arm and there’s no trace of a farting heart! (Alhough, Josh saved that for the very last part, so every time I looked over, I could still see those stupid cartoon eyes staring up at me. But man, when he was done, I had to fight back tears because I was so happy it was gone.)

Sorry this is such a shitty picture (blame Henry), but this was taken right after and now it’s in the lepresy-stage, so I won’t be taking a new picture for awhile.

And that’s the relatively uninteresting story of how I literally let someone color over a shitty memory. Thank you Josh from Artisan! I usually have a black cloud over my head when it comes to tattoos, but this was a really good experience.

 

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I know, a thousand trillion pictures of Marcy, nothing new. But she’s my babe and I wanted to share.

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I’m listening to Black Lab on Spotify and suddenly it’s 1998, Marcy is a kitten and I’m sun-tanning on my porch with Crisco because I can’t find my tanning oil. But the important question here is: why did I even have Crisco in my apartment to begin with? I only used the stove once and it was to make Spaghetti-O’s with Janna and then we left my apartment for an hour while it was cooking because it’s easy to forget you’re cooking food in a pot in a townhouse with literally one giant open room.

Oh, to be 18 again, not caring about skin cancer or turning townhomes into tinder.

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July 2008

July 2013

I pretty much spent the whole day sitting: Sitting at Chooch’s piano lesson. Sitting at my friend Patty’s birthday dinner. Sitting for nearly 3 hours getting my tattoo finished. Sitting at the computer editing photos. I think that tomorrow will be a day full of moving.

I hate sitting!!

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It was all because Tonic’s one wonderful hit “If You Could Only See” came on the radio last night as Henry and I were getting ready for bed.

“This song reminds me of when I went to get my GED,” I sighed nostalgically. (Which I originally spelled “nostalgicly.” Surprisingly, “Is ‘nostalgicly’ a word?” was not one of the questions on the test.) And even though Henry has heard my stories ten-fold by this point, he laid there silently while I told him about the boy I met at the McKeesport YWCA, and how we spent our GED testing breaks together in an alcove. (TALKING! We were just talking.) His name was Adam, this beautiful Mulatto boy who enjoyed building computers, which my 18-year-old self thought was pretty nerdy but his face made up for it.

The GED testing was split up into two sessions, so I got to see Adam once more, and this time, as we sat in the alcove after we finished the test (first ones to finish, whaddup), he asked me for my phone number. Right after I gave it to him, Psycho Mike arrived to pick me up.

“Is that your boyfriend?” Adam asked, as we watched from above as Mike entered the building.

“Yes,” I sighed sadly. (Mike and I had a really awful relationship that thankfully would expire a few months later.)

“Damn,” Adam said. “I was hoping you were going to say he was your brother.”

***

“And then he never called me!” I cried to Henry. “He could have been The One!”

“Maybe he didn’t call because you had A BOYFRIEND,” Henry spat.

Yeah, let’s go with that. But I seriously think about him every time I hear that fucking Tonic song. Even though I don’t remember his last name. (And I honestly only remembered his first name this morning.)

Taking the GED test was really an experience. And by “experience,” I mean CULTURE SHOCK. Before testing started on the first night, people were bitching to each other about how they needed to get home to feed their kids and take care of other Real Life things, when my only priority was going to the Plaza Café for grilled blueberry muffins and coleslaw with Psycho Mike and then renting an Argento movie next door at Firehouse Videos. And I remember slowly slouching down in my seat at the realization that these people likely dropped out of high school for actual, uncontrollable circumstances (I didn’t have to be a seasoned stereotyper to deduce that I was basically the only spoiled suburban bitch in that joint) while my reason was “because I felt like it and I wanted to see if my family would give a shit.”

Spoiler alert: They did not.

“Yeah, but would it have really changed anything if you had graduated high school?” Henry asked. And that was a good point, because graduating high school wouldn’t change the fact that my grandfather died when I was 16, and believe me, things would have been a lot different if he had still been alive. For instance, I definitely would have finished school and I 100% would have gone off to college right away, got swept up in the wrong crowd and likely wound up becoming a raging fan of Dave Matthews and OAR. (This is what I associate with college, apparently.)

And that’s something I think about a lot, not how dull my music preferences might be, but would I have still met Henry? If I had gone to college, I probably wouldn’t have been an office manager for a meat company when I was 20, so where would I have met him? The Army Navy Store? And then what about Chooch?!

This was all too much to think about before bed, so I changed the subject to having another baby, because THAT’S not a heavy conversation or anything. But before Henry could answer, I said, “But what if it wasn’t yours? Would you still stay with me and raise it as your own?”

Henry made a YOU’RE FUCKING JOKING scowl, but I elaborated. “No! I was beaten and raped by a ghost, and that’s how I got pregnant!” Henry started to roll over, a sign that he was peacing out of the conversation, but I kept pressing the issue, until he finally said, “THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN!”

“TELL THAT TO THE WOMAN BARBARA HERSHEY PORTRAYED IN THE ENTITY!” I yelled back, nearly in tears from laughing. Then, trying to reel him back in with affection, I put my hands on his chest and screamed, “OMG IS THAT YOUR REAL NIPPLE?”

“No, it’s my fake one,” Henry said dourly. It felt like it was in the middle of his chest! It was dark and I couldn’t see! I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t growing things I was unaware of.

We were quiet for a few minutes. Henry was actually probably already asleep, because he’s like a magician when it comes to sleep. I tried to stop it, but I could feel the giggles convalescing inside me, deep within the pit of my belly, so I silently shook for awhile, taking the entire bed along for the ride to Giddyville. Henry’s one eye opened slowly. “What?” he sighed.

“Nothing,” I squealed as a mouthful of laughs tried to launch themselves out of my face-cannon. And then it was all over. I sprayed Henry in the face with my uncorked vim & vigor, my stomach aching from the exertion. And I laughed and laughed and laughed, tears streaming down my face, while Henry just stared at me and asked me again, in his Papa H tone, what was so funny. (He gets paranoid.)

“I’m just thinking about getting impregnated by a ghost!” I cried, curling up into a fetal position to keep from peeing my pants.

This inspired Henry to expound once more on the physical improbabilities of this situation ever occurring, because he’s a mirth-murderer.

I forget what I said, but he thought I said something about “boozing,” so then I started scream-laughing all over again.

“It wasn’t that funny,” Henry mumbled.

“Yeah, but now I’m picturing myself at the bar with your fake nipple!” I wheezed.

If everything happens for a reason, then dropping out of high school was the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

And after all that, I still dreamt of Jonny Craig.

)

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Sometimes, Chooch and I give Henry a break and venture off on our own, except that by “on our own,” I mean “definitely with a chaperone.” Originally, Chooch and I (+ our chaperone Janna) were going to go to see The Secret of NIMH at the Hollywood Theater, because that was one of my favorite childhood movies of all time but no way does it still make me cry, OK? But then I saw that the sun was going to be out all day and I didn’t want to be in a dark theater during that, and it’s all about me anyway so I didn’t really ask Chooch and Janna if that was OK.

Instead, we went to Oakland because I thought it would be fun to show Chooch the Nationality Rooms at the Cathedral of Learning, which is part of the University of Pittsburgh. (Maybe some people reading this aren’t from here, I don’t know! God.) I’d call it my alma mater, but I didn’t actually graduate and I’m not a liar.

On the drive there, I jokingly said I had to quit college because I became a mom*.

“To who?” Chooch asked, and then within a minute of me posting that exchange on Facebook, someone corrected Chooch’s grammar. Thank god for the Internet. But you know, I guess that’s my fault for typing my conversations verbatim, instead of editing to make my 7-year-old sound like a pretentious grammar douche and not, you know, a 7-year-old. He’s got the rest of his life to learn how to talk like Mr. Belvedere.

*(Anyway, this isn’t true. I quit because I was bored, frustrated and realized that college definitely wasn’t for me. I mean, it didn’t do much to help me, because luk att how turrible i still write-z0rz.)

As soon as I parked the car, I realized that I didn’t have my wallet which was devastating because the plan was to eat lunch there afterward and I’m not going to lie, I was already starving.

When you walk into the Cathedral, it’s like being swallowed by a gothic cavern. There’s this amazing Great Hall that would make Hogwarts’s figurative weener shrink; you set foot in it and it’s like being transported back in time. The Cathedral of Learning was my favorite thing about Pitt. It had been about 6 years since I had gone back, so the novelty of it was definitely there.

You know what else was there? Chooch’s Grand Canyon-esque echo. Just what everyone there wanted: my kid’s ever-running mouth in primitive surround sound.

The audio tour for the Nationality Rooms isn’t free, but the rooms are open to the public regardless so we just took our own tour, renegade-style. Whatever that means. I’m on my fifth cup of coffee. This was just as well, because Chooch’s attention span did not allow us to stay in any one room for more than 3 minutes. (Except once, and it wasn’t even a nationality room; just a regular classroom as non-descript as Henry’s wardrobe.)

Chooch’s attempt at college math. In his head, this made sense.

A ceiling in one of the rooms, the nationality of which I do not recall because I quit caring after the fourth room when I noticed that Chooch was no longer carrying his phone and Bunny (I didn’t even notice that he brought that damn thing!) so we had to backtrack and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s backtracking.

(I just imagined myself having to backtrack in Alaska and I think I’m done with this day now.)

Chooch made a beeline for the blackboard in every room and immediately left his mark. In a lot of the rooms, there was the same writing in Chinese characters, so Janna and I started saying, “Looks like Chinese Chooch was here” and of course Chooch didn’t get it which made it even more fun to say.

We kept trying to get him to look at the shit in each room, but he was under the chalk’s spell. So basically it was for the best that I left my wallet at home and couldn’t pay for the audio tour.

 “Guys, come on.” Sometimes I really have no idea where he gets his independence, but that kid walked around like he owned the place.

Don’t worry, Chalkboard NARCS & Religious Zealots, I erased it.

Sadly, being a non-traditional student (and part-time to boot) didn’t leave me with too many fond memories, though a painting of Copernicus in the Polish room recalled a time when I made Janna enroll in the same Magic, Medicine and Science class, because see above where: I really have no idea where my kid gets his independence. This was back in 2004, Jesus Christ—TEN YEARS AGO. (See? I don’t need no college degree.) Anyway, that class was a piece of shit and our instructor was some young broad named Holly who hated us because we sat in the back of the class with some lady we befriended and we would literally sit there and write shit to each other in our notebooks while Holly and her class pets would go off on tangents about Plato’s Cave.

Anyway, one of the things Holly would make us do was read a million pages of super-dry Galileo bullshit from our overpriced text book and then write an outline, except that she called it some fancy word steeped in academia because “outline” was too pedestrian. Turns out I was a natural at these bullshit papers, and you know who wasn’t? Janna. On the first one we got back, Holly had scribbled angrily in red marker about how Janna had PLAGIARIZED and to this day, this is the best thing that ever happened to me in college. Not making the Dean’s List. Not having my Creative Non-Writing instructor tell me I was her favorite student (hahaha). Not watching my College Algebra teacher repeatedly Windex herself in the face instead of the overhead projector.

No, it was Janna being accused of plagiarizing her HOMEWORK. That was the best fucking day.

Having to PeeSoBad in the Italian room.

 Seriously, this kid. I tell him, “Go stand there so I can take your picture” and he does something Chooch-y every time.

Ladies Room Selfie. Yeah, that’s right. When Henry’s not around, Chooch loafs in the ladies room.

Haha. “Loafs.”

We walked past the room where I had an English Comp class and that made me think about the time Christina was visiting from Cincinnati during the spring of ’05 and she decided to come with me and hang out on campus while I had class. I specifically told her what time class was over and I made sure she had the room number memorized so I EXPECTED her to be waiting outside the door like a good fucking puppy at exactly 3:30.

Of course, she was nowhere to be found, and this was before either of us had a cell phone (I was notoriously anti-cell phone; she was just notoriously poor) so I marched all over the fucking Cathedral, breaking out into a sweat and eventually having to stop into the bathroom to pee because hide and seek has historically always revved up my bladder. Finally, I ran into her as she meandered out of a stairwell, no big deal.

“Oh, was class over early?” she asked casually, BECAUSE THAT BITCH THOUGHT SHE WAS EARLY. Do you know why she thought she was early? Because she never set her watch ahead for daylight savings time and she was actually an hour late because she was too busy lounging outside in the grass, watching people JOUST.

I was only That Mad because everything Christina did made me That Mad.

Thoroughly interested in reading about this giant tome of sheet music. Thank god.

I’d love to see how he sits in his actual 2nd grade class.

I found the aforementioned College Algebra classroom from 2006. “This is where I used to sit while you were in my belly, I mean, sitting next to me in your unhatched pod,” I sighed with maternal warmth to Chooch, who was 100% not interested.

Like so many dummies, I was forced to take remedial college math courses because my cumulative high school math average was not cutting it. (Somehow in high school, they kept putting me in advanced math classes even though I kept telling my guidance counselor that I was bad, just plain no good at math.) But I didn’t hate college math because I had the best instructor ever. Joanne was the fucking shit and quite literally gave me so many “a-ha!” moments from which I definitely would have benefited in high school. Her classes were the only ones I enjoyed going to and actually spoke to the other students. (I’m still friends with one of them IRL, actually. You know, as opposed to just in Toon Town.)

On the first day of that class, we had to go around the room and introduce ourselves. When it was my turn, I blurted out, “AND I JUST FOUND OUT I’M PREGNANT!” Totally taboo to make such a public declaration so soon into the pregnancy but I was so excited. This class was full of older, non-traditional students, so no one really shirked away from me like the younger students did in my geology class, but that might have been because my pregnant, bloated belly got stuck behind a desk one day, and that was when the professor had to go and get me a desk that had a detachable chair. That was a really awesome memory.

Anyway, this particular math class was split in two, but most of us ended up together during the spring semester too, and those sneaky brats, along with Joanne, had a fucking baby shower for me during class one day! (Much to  the chagrin of the men in that class.)

I still get all teared up when I think about it. OK, sorry Janna the Plagiarist, but maybe that’s my favorite college memory.

Report if you see bullying to the chancellor’s office, is what that is supposed to say, but Chooch kept saying “chandelier.” This was after he tried to force his way into said “chandelier’s” office. Thank god it was Sunday.

And locked.

Like real life college students, we were starving and thirsty, so Janna suggested that we go to the basement and see if the vending machines took credit cards but they only took Panther Cards, which are the dumb college card things and Chooch was like, “YOU WENT HERE SO WHERE IS YOUR PANTHER CARD? USE YOUR DAMN PANTHER CARD!” But Mean Henry would never let me put money on my Panther Card because what…I’d use it to buy Adderall? Who knows. And even if I did have one back then, hello, I haven’t been a student since 2008; go get your own Panther Card, Doogie.

Look at me, giving my kid a taste of true college life! Spread your wings, Chooch!

Even though we were ready to collapse with hunger and thirst, we’d have been remiss to leave without taking Chooch to the 36th floor to take in the nauseating view.

Man. What a great afternoon.

****

When we went home to retrieve my wallet, Henry was lounging about like the goddamn Sultan of Brookline.

“I can’t believe you didn’t check in on us, not even once!” I cried.

“I knew where you were,” he said casually, so now I’m convinced he’s having me tailed.

 

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This song recalls a time when my closet may have contained quite a bit of crushed velvet. I still love it so much.

The song. And crushed velvet.

Thinking about calling off work and finding a foggy forest to run in.

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Every now and again, Henry will mention this one broad from the corporate office of his dumb juice job. She’s an admin assistant, I guess, so sometimes Henry will have to talk to her about invoices or other office-y bullshit (and probably things of a SEXUAL NATURE as well, knowing Henry). And he’ll off-handedly say something like, “I had to talk to Shanice today—-” and then I stop listening to the rest because all I hear in my head is “Do doo do do doo doodle doo” and I start laughing so hard because SHANICE. And then Henry is like WHAT.

This has been going on for years. Literally—years.

And then yesterday, Henry was taking me to work when one of his little work palsies called him and Henry was all, “I don’t know, you’ll have to call Shanice—” in his Official Work Tone and my cheeks were near-bursting as I tried to swallow back the laugh lava, but finally I erupted in a hysterical wheeze, “DOES SHE LOVE YOUR SMILE?!” He was still talking on the phone, so I just kept repeating it and laughing even harder.

Henry did that thing he does where he curls up one side of his lip and silently shoots me judgmental daggers from behind his serial killer eyeglasses. When he ended his phone call, I was still giggling like a 12-year-old.

“Please make that her ring tone,” I cried.

“Make WHAT WHOSE ring tone?” he asked, mostly in disgust, but I also detected the tiniest slice of curiosity.

“‘I Love Your Smile’! Make it Shanice’s ring tone!” I yelled incredulously. I mean, duh.

And here is where I learned that after 8 years of my “Does she love your smile!?” jokes, Henry had no idea that Shanice was a singer in the 90s who enjoyed relative success with her R&B jam “I Love Your Smile.”

“Who WOULD know that?!” he cried in defense after I explained it to him. So then of course I had to find the song and play it for him on my phone. It triggered approximately zero memory for him, probably because that was back when he was too busy being the Every Parent while his Ginger Nightmare stepped out with all of the men (and sometimes women) and sorry, but he didn’t have time to know what songs the urban radio station was spinning back then. And then I played one of her slow jams (TURN OFF THE LIGHTS, duh) and he told me, and I quote, “Get away from me.” So, what, I guess we’re not shadow-dancing to Shanice at our Never Happenin’ Wedding?

And then somehow I started playing songs from the Boomerang soundtrack (the Toni Braxton/Babyface duet “Give You My Heart” amirite?!)  and Henry was about ready to roll me out of the passenger door by the time we got to The Law Firm, probably because I was getting a little out of control (my version of car dancing involves miming the act of face-punching the driver).

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Chooch’s godfather Brian and I have been out of touch for awhile, but we were messaging each other on Facebook the other night; I got all nostalgic (who, me?) and started reading old LiveJournal bullshit. I found this post from when Brian, Henry and I took Chooch to Kennywood for the first time and wanted to share because it was clearly an awful time for Henry. And those are my FAVORITE times!

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Originally posted August 2006

All summer long, I have been itching to go to Kennywood, Pittsburgh’s amusement park. I kept begging Henry, telling him that it would be the long overdue present for bearing his son. My loins have burned so bright for thrill rides that I would have been happy even going to a county fair and scraping myself on the rusty bolts holding together the death traps.

Two weeks ago, I made Henry drive past Kennywood at night. There’s not much to be seen from the road, but the few glimpses of blinking lights I caught peeking from the tree tops was enough to make tears stream down my face. Henry didn’t even care.

Finally, after trying numerous times to plan the trip, only to have my mom (who proposed back in May that we should all go to Kennywood and she’ll push the baby around in his stroller while we ride) bail on us every time, Henry decided that if I could find someone stupid enough to go with us, he’d be the designated Chooch Pusher. I asked Brian, who in turn canceled a meeting and un-RSVP’d to a fiftieth birthday party.

I asked him if he would ride everything, because that was my greatest concern. Evidently, once my friends entered their twenties, they all became spinny ride-impaired. Janna once nearly puked on me at a carnival and the ride wasn’t even that thrilling.

“Oh yeah, I ride everything!” Brian insisted.

So we picked him up at his apartment at 4:30, after nearly getting creamed by a large thug in a car fleeing a fleet of cops in a high speed chase. It was so scary that it made my scalp twinge. And then Henry, a.k.a. Professional Driver, took a “short cut” through various city ‘hoods to avoid rush hour traffic. What should have been a twenty minute drive at best turned into an hour stuffed into a sedan with a crying baby in a car seat, Brian bitching, me whining from the back seat, and Henry massaging his temples.

But we finally got there around 5:30 and parked in the upper lot because we like doing things for free. The only problem with this is that there is a steep escalator that transports people to the bottom lot and I was worried about the stroller. I begged Henry to take the path that wraps around down to the bottom of the hill, but he jabbed a fat finger at the escalator sign and said, “It doesn’t say that strollers are prohibited. I’m going down!” And he did, with the back wheels of the stroller perched on a step and the front end of it teetering precariously into the air. I rested my hand on my heart and chanted, “Oh God. Oh God. Be careful! Oh God. Oh God.” I mean, I wanted Chooch’s first trip to be thrilling, but not as thrilling as fucking free falling from an escalator. I panicked with even more intensity when the man in front of Henry and Chooch reached the bottom and walked off.

“There goes our buffer!” I sighed. I figured if Henry’s stupidity sent the stroller plummeting, hitting the back of that man would soften the blow. We made it to the bottom and my blood pressure started to go down.

Most people, upon crossing the threshold of an amusement park, find themselves smiling like mainliners. I fall into that category. My chest was positively surging with excitement. I was giddy and making fun of people and bouncing on my toes. Henry and Brian looked grim.

Henry paid for all three of us to speed things along. Brian seemed touched and said, “You didn’t have to do that! I have money.” Henry gruffly answered, “I know. You can pay me back when you get change.” But you know Henry, always speaking so gruffly.

Brian noticed a sign for the Fall Fantasy Parade. Kennywood does this at the end of each season. Basically, they find the high schools with the worst bands and portliest majorettes with the eye-hand coordination of a 6-month-old and blend them all together into a giant pelvic-thrusting caboodled clusterfuck, making it nearly impossible to get anywhere in the park while it’s undulating along with the speed of a caterpillar. Brian was not happy about this. I laughed.

Chooch will be able to look back on the day when he’s older since I brought the camcorder along. He will surely hug his sides and smile at the memory of Henry barking at me to watch where I’m walking, me retorting with my signature hateful sass, and Brian oozing sarcasm from every orifice of his business casual-dressed body. Seriously, who wears a long sleeved button down shirt, slacks, and Italian leather sandals to an amusement park? BRIAN, that’s who.

As we entered the tunnel that spills you out into the park, “Straight Up” was playing over the sound system. “Oh goodie, you mean I get the Fall Fantasy Parade, Henry’s asshole haircut, and Paula Abdul all for only $9?” Brian enthused.

It was at this point that Brian decided to point out all the rides he would not be partaking in. “I won’t ride that. Or that. Oh hell nah, I’m not riding that!”

The first ride we rode was a Garfield-themed shit fest. There was a camera set up at the end, and I threw my arms up to illustrate properly my jubilation for being at Kennywood. Brian’s face sagged into a bored scowl. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get close enough to the kiosk which was showing all the pictures on monitors, because a bunch of assholes in wheelchairs had thrown their chairs into park and were just idling there, blocking the counter like a gimp armada.

Brian quickly set the mood for the evening after that ride by briskly informing me that “While your asshole boyfriend is pissing, I’m going to get food.” I stood alone, with Chooch and his stroller, looking like a lost lamb until Henry returned from the bathroom.

“Where’s Brian?” he asked. This was going to become the question of the night. “Getting food,” I gave him what was going to become the answer of the night.

.

Literally, Brian and I rode about five rides, maybe six, and spent most of the night standing around like assholes, getting in everyone’s way. Every time I turned around, Brian was in line to get a cheese steak or a corn dog or soft serve, and when he wasn’t in line, he was sitting at a table eating Henry’s and my cheese fries. Henry spent our rent money losing at games all night while Chooch stared at passers-by with a pissed off look.

 

Not amused on his first Kennywood train ride.

I was the only one in a good mood for once.

At some point, when I took over pushing the stroller, Brian joked that people likely thought he and I were the parents and Henry was the grandfather. We laughed about this sporadically through the day, and Henry would respond with a derelict “Oh, ho ho ho.” But then I also suggested that some people might have thought that Brian was our manny.

 

On every ride, even the train, I hugged my abdomen and wailed, “My incision! Oh holy shit, my incision!” Yes, it’s true that my C-section was four months ago, but I’ve experienced phantom incision pains ever since I healed (or have I?). It feels like tiny bees are stinging me along my battle wound. Those tiny sweat bees.

Actually, my incision neuroses run so deep that I would have to make a separate entry just for that topic alone, so let’s move on.

Things took a turn for the worse in line for the Racer when I mistakenly told Brian that Henry had said we were fucked up. See, Brian and I are weight-obsessed and we bought into the whole ephedra revolution with our entire bodies and souls. You can’t put Brian and I together without one of us eventually lamenting the ban on ephedra. “All because one asshole baseball player had to go and die because of it!” we’ll scoff in disgust. So Brian came up with a solution: We will live in Japan for six months and lose weight on their legal ephedra and then come back home and point and laugh at all the people who buy ephedra-free diet pills. Seriously, you don’t hear about the Japanese OD’ing on ephedra, do you?

Naturally, Henry’s response to this plan was, “No wonder why you and Brian are friends–you’re both fucked up.”

When I told this to Brian, he became really bothered. “Oh, I’m fucked up, am I?” I couldn’t tell if his surly disposition was in jest or if he was really hating on Henry, because we were in line for a roller coaster and he suddenly blurted out, “Where’d that motherfucker go?”

“Who?” I asked, confused.

“Your asshole boyfriend. You know, someone ought to tell him to shave that beard. He looks like shit. That motherfucker.” And so for the next three hours, every time Henry would suggest something, like walking to another part of the park, Brian would retort with, “Why, I don’t know Henry. I might be too fucked up to walk over there.”

Brian eludes Kennywood’s spell of enchantment and slouches in misery. Also, I think he burned through all his cash on food by this point..After exiting the Thunderbolt later that evening, I saw the buffer guy from the escalator standing there. I excitedly tugged on Brian’s arm and whispered, “Look! It’s Buffer!”

“Who?!” Brian asked, looking around wildly. I tried to suppress giggles as I reminded him who Buffer was. “Oh. That guy. I wasn’t aware that we had labeled him.” I ran over to where Henry and Chooch were waiting and pointed out Buffer to Henry, too.

“Who? Oh.”

And then I saw him later when we were seated at a picnic table and I had the perfect opportunity to stalk him through my camera.

I wanted to go on the new ride (the SwingShot), but Henry and Brian laughed when they saw it. “That’s obnoxious. You can go on that while I go on the swings,” and with that, Brian left me standing there dumbly. I was so mad because I didn’t want to ride alone, but it was too late for me to ride the asshole swings with Brian. I stood there with my lip out and became even more outraged every time Brian swung past us. “He’s not even smiling or laughing! Look at him, he’s expressionless!” He just sat there in his swing, staring vacantly. “He probably just went on it because of the bar that goes between your legs,” Henry laughed, continuing on the path of unfunny.

After sulking over missing out on the new ride, getting Indian brush burn on both arms on another ride, and riding the Pirate Ship with a hard core man seated behind me who was reduced to screaming like a girl once the ride started, I duped Brian into riding the Wipe Out with me.

“What does it do?” he asked. The ride wasn’t in motion when we approached it; only one kid was seated on it and the operator was waiting for more riders to come before starting it.

“It’s kind of like the Music Express,” Henry lied.

“Yeah, except it doesn’t spin as fast,” I added.

Brian shrugged and we got on board. He knew as soon as it started accelerating that he was in for it.

“You fucking bitch!” he yelled from the seat across from me. “‘Oh, it just spins around in a circle.’ Then what the fuck is this shit?!” he shouted as the entire circle of seats rose from the platform and began tilting as it spun simultaneously. We could see Henry standing near the gate, laughing and pointing. “And fuck your boyfriend, too!” Brian screamed.

When we got off the ride, I wiped away tears of laughter and said, “I forgot it did all that other stuff!”

“You forgot nine tenths of what it did, you bitch.”

The park was about to close within thirty minutes, and I had yet to ride the Jack Rabbit, which is a wooden coaster boasting a double dip. Brian tiredly raised his hands in surrender. “I don’t give a shit about the Jack Rabbit. You and Henry can go on it and I’ll stay with the kid.” Of course Brian waits until Chooch is practically in a sleep coma before offering to relieve Henry.

So I basically exchanged Brian’s Henry-bashing-in-line antics for Henry’s grumbling of how badly he had to go the “bathroom.” By bathroom, he meant that he had to poop. I learned of his anguish after I punched him in the stomach and he acted like his ass was going to start grinding out poop logs like a sausage machine. I didn’t care of his misfortune, as long as he didn’t crap his pants on the ride (those seats are tight quarters!) and as long as I didn’t catch any whiffs of a rotten bouquet.

Also in line, I informed Henry why Brian kept calling himself fucked up, and Henry was all, “Oh. It’s true You both are and I’m not retracting it. You’re also both juvenile.”

We left after that. My whole body was arrested with giddiness and at one point I came down on one knee in the middle of the parking lot because I was laughing so hard. Henry walked far ahead of us with Chooch and the stroller, while Brian ranted about being fucked up and juvenile.

Brian called me the next morning and said, “God, my feet are killing me today! Maybe if I wasn’t such a fucked up juvenile, I would have worn more sensible shoes last night.”

He never did pay Henry back, either.

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Henry’s nieces are so pretty and deserve a repost.

*From February 2012*

A few years ago, I bought a 1980’s prom dress off eBay but it doesn’t fit over my rack; it finally occurred to me that I should just dress up Sam and Steph in that and my all-purpose tutu. So I spent yesterday doing just that.

;

I figured Green Man’s Tunnel would be a good location, because it’s grunge-y and abandoned, and hello – The Green Man lives there. Steph’s boyfriend Kian came with us and he really triggered that small “Mom” alarm that’s hidden inside me by doing the sorts of dangerous things that teenaged boys are born to do. Every once in awhile, he would say things like, “Hey, I have an idea” and I would find that I was spontaneously bracing myself.

He was, however, the most polite teenage boy I think I have ever met, and even carried all my shit for me. Good pick, Steph!

Meanwhile, Henry wouldn’t come anywhere near the tunnel with us because he thought the police were going to show up. So he just walked up and down the road looking like a walking sandwich-board for Megan’s Law. I was a little pissed because he’s my designated lens holder.

I lost sight of him eventually and became convinced that he was fishing in the creek across the street.

After I took the first few shots by the creek, I realized Henry was creeping in the background and had to yell at him to leave, which made him hate his life even more.

God, I really needed that.

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Saw this list of 21 Songs To Help You Wake Up From Those Morning Snooze Marathons
circulating around this morning and while I’m mostly nodding in agreement, I can’t help but think they REALLY dropped the ball by not including this seminal Was Not Was hit:

(Yes, this is totally my current rise & shine go-to. WHAT’S YOURS?)

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Corey found our parent’s wedding album and texted me pictures from it this afternoon, which I can honestly say has been the high point of this week. Even though I was 5 when I made my debut as a flower girl (my dress had tiny bells sewn into the ruffles, you guys! and my shoes were Candies!), I have only vague recollections of this day at best. (Because clearly all I cared about was what I was wearing.)

Thank god my mom’s facial expressions and vacant eyes fill in the gaps. I feel like she FOR SURE popped some pills that morning.

Fuck, they hated me, lol.

My Pappap looks PISSED. My grandma is totally hissing, “SMILE. THE NEIGHBORS MIGHT BE WATCHING.” Susie knows her dress is the shit (seriously, Wendy and I both agreed that we would totally wear that dress right now in 2014). I’m too afraid to look at Sharon. She looks like she’s casting a spell and I don’t like it.

BUT LOOK HOW HAPPY I AM!

I think someone didn’t want to get hitched that day.

(Also, thats my great-grandma in the rocking chair. She was from Yugoslavia and didn’t speak English*. Also, she scared me.)

A poster for REGRET.

****

I honestly cannot stop laughing at these. I mean, I’m thankful they DID get married because otherwise, I wouldn’t have my brothers, but Jesus Christ their marriage was loveless before it even began! They make Henry and me look like a cover of a romance novel.

*ED.NOTE: I’ve just been informed by a family member that my great-grandma was very kind and DID speak English, so what we have here is an example of another lie my mom told me when I was a child.

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For most people, it would have been, “Try this ice cream that I think is bomb” and that would have been the end of it. But not if my dad was the one bestowing ice cream with explosive superlatives. Janna and I had stopped by my parent’s house one night in 2000, probably because I needed to panhandle, and we got stuck in my dad’s garage while he told us his saga regarding Reinhold’s Caramel Caribou, some goddamn ice cream that he was inexplicably obsessed with, wanted to marry, was ordered to stay within 500 feet of, is currently getting its name lasered off his bicep.

I refer to it as solely my dad’s garage because this story is set during the awkward time between my parent’s separation and subsequent divorce, so my dad was essentially living in the detached garage. Don’t worry—he was fine. He had a jukebox, a TV, a couch and a vintage Pepsi machine full of bottled beer. He was just fine.

So this ice cream, Janna and I had never heard of it because we were going through that stage where all we did was basically drink and eat food that could be ordered via telephone, and as far as we knew, there was no Mike’s Hard Ice Cream and the local pizza joints seemed like they were sticking with “just cannoli” as their takeout dessert option. This just made my dad even more excited to tell us about his newfound freezer aisle romance. We were all prepared for him to just give us a goddamn bowl of it, but first we had to listen to A Story.

I guess my dad had fallen in love with Caramel Caribou at first spoonful, and this is the part where we assume it was made from the milk of a crack-addled cow. Too bad for my dad, but going back for seconds was about to get challenging. He told us about all the time he spent looking at the grocery stores, but there was nary a carton of Caribou to be found. God only knows where he ate his first bowl of it. Some black market creamery in Chinatown? What the fuck.

“And then one day a Reinhold’s delivery truck drove past me,” my dad said, getting all excited and I think probably losing sight of how grand of an audience he actually had. I mean, come on, Guy. Janna and I were in a hurry. “So I pulled a U-ey and followed him.”

Like you do when you’re feenin’.

He followed him a few miles down the road until the truck pulled into a school parking lot, at which my point my dad waited for the driver to exit the truck before veritably accosting him for a hookup. (Trust me, I know my dad. I can only imagine the fervor he laid out during this encounter. I equal-parts wish I had been there & am grateful for not being there.)

Now I wasn’t there for the verbatim exchange, but I’ve always believed it for sure went something like this: “Hey palsie, ya gots any of that sweet ass Caramel Caribou back there?” In hushed tones. With my dad shaking him by the collar of his work shirt. Like it’s some kind of new marijuana blend that is eventually going to be the subject of a future Degrassi episode.

Reinhold’s Driver indulges him, but he does not in fact have any on his truck, or on his person, but offers to check the warehouse when he gets back. So they exchange numbers, like you do when you’re stalking someone for ice cream.

And a little while later, the guy actually fucking called my dad. He sounds like a really great guy, but I’m wondering if there was any sort of cash handoff.

I guess the guy’s boss was all, “You can’t sell products from our warehouse to a street-person, fuck off.” So the driver instead gave my dad a list of where he could MAYBE find certain ice creams named after reindeer by total ACCIDENT and not because some Reinhold delivery driver SNITCHED.

Eventually, my dad bought some multi-gallon jug reserved for ice cream parlors and single broads on Valentine’s Day and was finally able to celebrate his Caribou love in the privacy of his own home (garage).

After enduring his story, he served Janna and me each a bowl of what was essentially just vanilla ice cream with Rolos. It was OK.

I thought of my dad’s heroic efforts last week though when I ate my first Sonya apple.

We almost didn’t stop at Shop n Save that day because Henry is a heartless bastard who thought it would be just fine to visit Speck and Don’s graves at the pet cemetery without bringing a floral offering. Who does that? Fucking asshole Henry, that’s who. He also kicks albino puppies and wants to eat seals, not save them.

Anyway, I got all huffy so Henry turned the car around and drove to a grocery store about 10 minutes away from the cemetery because he’s afraid of The Huff. That’s when I saw the glistening bushel of Sonya apples. (Not when he turned the car around, but when we went inside Shop n Save. Don’t be stupid. I don’t eat fruit off the side of the road. Anymore.)

When I saw the Sonyas, I’m not going to front and pretend like some dubstep Hallelujah chorus kicked into effect, because as of that moment, it was just an apple I had never had.

You know how I am with apples. Ever since Barb duped me into falling in love with them all the way back in 2011 (I was a late bloomer), I’ve since been on a mission to try every single “brand” of apple I can get my decorated paws on. Lately, though Henry has only been bringing home the ubiquitous Jonagolds and Galas, sometimes a Honeycrisp if I’ve been good, because apparently it’s slim pickins in January.

But this Sonya apple. My god, it tasted like fucking candy. Like no other apple I have ever had. Literally, this motherfucker was a natural candy apple. I couldn’t believe it. Pornography on my tongue. Can’t type in full sentences.

All I knew was that I needed to eat these gems like, every day. The problem was that Henry, the official grocery shopper of the household, said that he had never seen these apples anywhere in his pantry raids. (Or panty raids.) And the Shop n Save we bought them from (just two because Henry “refuses” to buy a metric shit ton of something he’s not sure I’m going to love or reject) is approximately 20 miles outside of Pittsburgh and Henry just doesn’t love me enough to be making weekly Sonja pilgrimages.

And thus the burgeoning obsession was born. No, I didn’t stalk a farmer a la Erin’s Dad, but I did take to the Internet, where I found the official website of the Sonja apple, which presented me with the opportunity to leave customer feedback. SO I DID.

AND THEN A SONYA APPLE REPRESENTATIVE EMAILED ME!

I was so stoked about this that I of course wanted to shout about it to everyone at work. The blanket response was: “I mean….OK. Good job.” And that’s when it hit me. He might not be my biological father, but holy fucking shit, I am just like my goddamn dad. Casing creepy Asian markets for persimmons, having my BFF mail me cherimoya from California, ingratiating myself with Sonya apple breeders–what is my life??

Fruit is my Caramel Caribou.

Don’t worry about me. The local Shop n Save is also selling Sonyas, so I’m stocked up for now.

For now….:(

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Originally posted February 8, 2008

[1]: Pickle Park: – an interstate rest area frequented by prostitutes, for those not up with the trucker lexicon.

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Sometimes I get all nostalgic and pick a random year to look at on Flickr. This morning I blindly clicked on the summer of 2007 and, aside from a ton of pictures of an adorably chubby-cheeked 15-month-old Chooch that made me want Henry to inject me again RIGHTTHISSECOND, I was ready to peace out of that particular year. (I think I’m fat now? Yikes. I don’t think I had yet lost even an ounce of my pregnancy weight.) But before I picked a new year, I noticed that there were pictures from that summer’s Warped Tour on the next page—I don’t think I’ve looked at those pictures once since 2007. And even though I was there with Christina and her sister, it was still kind of fun to revisit some of those bands that I haven’t thought of in years. (My American Heart? Monty Are I? Straylight Run?!) And I forgot that Paramore was there that year!

I am infamously picky when it comes to female singers. I don’t know why, but girl vocals usually don’t trigger that part of my brain that makes all of the feelings shoot out of my eyeballs like boy vocals do, but there have been a few over the years: Fisher, old Tegan and Sara, Eisley, Barbara Streisand (LEAVE ME ALONE) and Hayley Williams of Paramore.

The summer of 2007 was not a particularly pleasant one for me and Paramore’s album “All We Know Is Falling” accompanied me on many cemetery cries. (Particularly the song “Conspiracy,” which was even a ringtone on my precious pink Razr.) And when I got that close to Hayley at that summer’s Warped Tour in Cincinnati, I had a major fan girl moment even though I was 27 and she was like, 18 there I think. The music scene I’m into is so male-dominated that usually anytime a female-fronted band starts to make its way up, its time is unfortunately limited. But Paramore was the real deal and I think everyone knew it back then, too. I’m not surprised that it’s eight years later and they have not only proven that their talent is legit, but they have become mainstream darlings without alienating their original fan base. (In my opinion, anyway. I totally don’t think they sold out at all—they’ve just grown up, musically and as people, which makes sense unless you’re Avril Lavigne who’s 30 and still singing about skater bois.)

There really hasn’t been any female-fronted band that has come up in the scene since Paramore that have really grabbed my attention, and it doesn’t help that each subsequent female singer is automatically compared to Hayley. I admit that’s the first thing I thought of when I first saw Automatic Loveletter and Versa Emerge, and that’s not fair.

Paramore also gave me one reason only to be thankful for the stupid “Twilight” movies:

And Hayley can even beautifully & effortlessly pull off the Molly Ringgold look (this song makes me cry every time I hear it, btw; perhaps it makes me think of Henry, who knows):

Seriously, I could fill up this post with every one of their videos, but that would be obnoxious, and that would be SO out of character…

I spent most of this morning listening to old Paramore and it’s funny how much of a time capsule music can be. It brought back some good memories that I had otherwise forgotten, so I guess the summer of 2007 wasn’t really all that bad. Chooch was super cute then, at any rate.

DON!!!! :(

There’s really no point to this post. I just wanted to be a fan girl for a minute. Carry on.

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