Two weekends ago, I was at the Quaker Cemetery. Outside of the meeting house, there was this moat made of broken glass shards. Clear glass, amber glass, green glass — it all looked so sparkly and I had an "Ooooh, pretty colorssss" moment, forgetting all about the demons camping out behind me in the decrepit stone meeting house.

For awhile, constructing my own pretty jagged glass moat around the front of my own house seemed like a really brilliant idea. But then I remembered that glass can sometimes be dangerous.

I guess this picture will have to suffice, until the day I live in a house without a small child. Then I’ll have my moat and you all can come wade in it.

This inspires me to start my own squad¹. A squad that pillages neighborhoods, tagging our squad name on smooth potato-looking stones. It’ll be the Oh Honestly Squad. There might even be pins someday. No one will fuck with us. Bars worldwide will be naming drinks after us.

If you want in, sign up below. Then start tagging rocks with vulgarities and nuclear threats² and then send me the pictures³. It’ll be the best fun you’ve never had.

[1]: This was after I realized that stone didn’t actually say "squid." Previously, I was all about getting a pet squid but now I see the ridiculousness of that and have moved on to the squad thing. Maybe our tag should have "squid" in it?

[2]: Make sure it can’t be traced back to me. I’m not going to jail for you.

[3]: I’m not funnin’. I really want enough pictures to warrant its own set on flickr.

[x]: This post translates into "I have nothing better to look forward to, save me."

The first time I was there was the summer of 2000.

“There’s this Quaker cemetery out in Perryopolis. Supposed to be haunted or some shit. We should go.” It was one of those glimmering moments of spontaneity that, on a boring summer’s night, sounded a lot more interesting that the usual routine of getting drunk on my porch. I was a little wary that the person hatching this plan was my friend Justin, who had a bad track record of insisting he knew the exact coordinates of various haunted hot spots, and then like a bad repeating record, we’d inevitably wind up lost  with the gas tank on E and a few empty bags of Corn Nuts.

Our friend Keri wanted to accompany us, so I felt a little better because she was always the responsible one. If you were going to get lost, break down, get a condom lodged inside of you, Keri was the girl you’d want with you. She also didn’t scare easily, so I quietly planned to wedge myself between the two of them once (if) we arrived.

Perryopolis is around 30 miles south of Pittsburgh, but the trip didn’t take long in my Eagle Talon, considering my propensity for driving it like a dragster. As we approached the town of Perryopolis, I silently hoped that we would be unable to find the cemetery in the dark, of that it didn’t exist, or that the Earth opened up to engulf it every night after midnight. Maybe there would be a fence too dangerous to scale, Hounds of Hell snarling and tied to posts at the entrance, an after hours admission fee implemented by Satan.

The area was rural. We coasted past a few farms and even fewer houses. The uneven asphalt was littered with loose pebbles and sticks, which  clinked and snapped under the tires. The streetlights did little to alleviate my uneasiness. Unfortunately, Justin must have polished his navigational bearings, because after having me make a few turns, he told me to pull over.

“This is it,” he said, leaning in between the front seats and looking out my window. We kind of just sat there, real still, not speaking, until Keri finally went for the door handle. We all filed out and crossed the dark, quiet street. It was too dark to see the cemetery from where we stood, and after hesitating to see who would step up to lead us, we finally took the plunge in tandem and began climbing the slight hill before us.

Halfway up, we could make out a wrought iron fence, the kind you would expect to wreathe an old, small town cemetery. My eyes searched for the tombstones, the meat of the graveyard. That’s when I saw it, my first glimpse of the old stone house in the middle of the small plot of land. Suddenly, it wasn’t what lay beneath the ground that frightened me.

“I don’t like the looks of that place,” I whispered hoarsely to Keri and Justin.

“What the fuck is it, a church?” Justin asked no one in particular, squinting his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

“I’m not climbing no fucking fence,” Keri spat, arms crossed. She was always the kill joy of the group. Me, I’d go along with just about anything, no matter how terrified I was, mainly because my adrenaline would overtake my common sense every single time. But Keri, she’d get so far and then stop. Or conveniently conjure up a head ache. That girl has headaches more often than Seattle has rain.

Just then, the dull roar of an engine resounded from further down the road. We all turned to look. Headlights eventually appeared over the crest in the curving road, and the car began to decelerate. We continued to watch as it approached the base of the hill and slowed to a complete stop several yards away from my car, parked along the shoulder.

“Is it a cop?” Keri whispered.

The driver flashed the head lights. We were stapled to the soft ground under our feet. The driver blew the horn. We jumped. The driver laid on the horn, sending an atmosphere-rippling siren through the once-quiet night. All three of us screamed and turned to run back to my car. We shoved each other ruthlessly, none of us daring to be in the back.

My car was parked directly across the base of the hill. The rogue car still idled in the same position a few yards away on the opposite side of the road, continuing to blare the chilling horn. We made it to my car, slamming into the side of it. I fumbled for my keys. I dropped them on the road as I tried frantically to sort through the menagerie of plush over-sized key chains. Keri and Justin were swearing and screaming at me. I was crying.

The bully car continued to intimidate us with the horn-blaring while I unlocked my door and reached across the inside to unlock the passenger door. Keri and Justin both tried to get in my uterus-sized two-door Talon at once, prolonging their success. Once they were in, I gunned it, not even bothering to steal a look at the driver of the opposing car as we squealed past it.

We drove in silence until the poorly-lit country roads spilled us out onto the highway where we took refuge among the traffic.

Only then did anyone dare speak.

“I don’t know what you guys were so scared for. It was probably just some teenager having some fun, trying to scare us,” Justin said, leaning back with his fingers laced behind his head.

*****

The weather was unseasonably spring-like on Sunday, so Henry, Chooch and I piled into the car and drove south to take some pictures and enjoy the rare opportunity to drive with the windows down. Our plan was to go out to Uniontown, a small town at the base of the mountains, and get some nice country photographs.

We took Rt. 51, which leads straight from Pittsburgh to Uniontown. It also passes through Perryopolis on the way.

“Hey, there’s this old Quaker Cemetery out here. We should try to find it,” I casually suggested, recognizing that the right hand turn into farm country was coming up. What better way to spend a beautiful Sunday with the kid and manservant? Field trip  the haunted cemetery! C’mon boy, let’s get our desecratin’ on, I should have hollered to Chooch.

Henry found it without mishap (evidently the road it’s on is called Quaker Cemetery Road, so Henry figured it was a safe bet we were on the right road). When I reached the crest of the small hill, I spotted the stone house with it’s corrugated tin roof, ominously gaping front door and windows that stared out like empty eye sockets.

I wasn’t scared this time, finding bravery in the sunlight, and I marched right through the archway and started taking pictures. Probably, if I was someone other than myself, the first thing I’d do, I’d go straight inside that stone shack and start poking around. But I was cautious. I let Henry go inside first while I admired the various hues of beer bottle shards as they sparkled in the sun. The shards wrapped around the front of the house, like a moat in front of an alcoholic’s castle. I was sad that no one ever invites me to party in creepy cemetery houses.

Henry went inside first, getting some digital shots of the interior. I asked him if he felt scared when he was in there and he gave me that “don’t be an asshole” sneer. Still, I lingered near the door while Henry and Chooch retreated somewhere in the back, behind the house. I thought I heard shuffling coming from inside the house, but I shook the idea out of my mind and went in.

The inside was sheltered by a roof made up of thin wooden slats. It looked unstable, like I could be buried under it at any given moment. The walls were mostly blue and covered in graffiti. I tried to read it all, as much as I could before my bravery reserve was drained, but there was nothing very interesting. No Hail Satans or Human Sacrifice FTW!s to be found; just an abundance of generic “_____ was here”s and ambiguous initials.

Each end of the room had a fireplace. Henry said later that he had wanted to get all up in it and see what was going on in the chimney’s guts, but he never said why he didn’t follow through. Because he was scared, that’s why. I can only imagine how much clenching he had to do to keep from shitting his pants when he was in there alone.

Still afraid of the being impaled by a collapsing slat of wood, I started to walk out. Henry completely doesn’t believe me, and probably no one else will either, but as I started to step through the doorway, I heard a chorus of whispering coming from \the left corner of the room. I SWEAR TO GOD. I swore to God when I was telling Henry about it too and he was like, “You can’t swear to something you don’t believe in” so I changed my pledge of honesty to Satan instead and Henry started in on that bullshit about how you can’t believe in one and not the other and I was like, “Shut up, stop acting like you’re religious” and he said if there was no God and just Satan, then the world would be way worse than it is now and I said, “No, Satan’s just lazy is all” and that’s about as deep as the two of us get into theological debates. Our next one is scheduled for 2030. As if Henry will still be living then.

After the whole whispering episode, I was pretty much in a huge hurry to leave. If you buy into legends and ghost stories, it’s said that the meeting house was where witches were taken to be killed. I really hope the whispering I heard belonged to Glinda.

Later that day, I was reading a website about the cemetery and it says, “There are also stories of certain graves being cursed, meaning that if you stand at them, or read the writing on the head stone, you could have bad luck or die.”

Awesome. Nice knowing you, Chooch.

“Henry?! Hi. I was just calling to tell you that Christina and I might be about to get our asses kicked.” 

“Yeah? I’m not coming to get you.”

It all seemed so harmless when the notion came to me on Sunday evening.

“Best idea ever: let’s walk down Brookline Boulevard with my Holga and take pictures of the assholes who live in my town.

”

Henry did not agree that this was the best idea ever, but Christina, always afraid of defying me, went along with it. I grabbed the camera and my cell phone and we embarked into the wild frontier of Brookline.

Walking down the main drag, we came across few pedestrians. Apparently, one of those Steelers games was on, so most of the population had taken refuge inside their homes or local bars, eyes glued to TV screens. I secretly felt proud knowing that I left a house where The Game had not taken over the  television.

An older man slowly passed by, one hand clamped firmly upon  his young daughter’s arm, keeping her upright while she clomped along on roller skates. He tossed us a furtive, sidelong glance and picked up his pace, dragging her along. I suspect he perceived us as being suspicious, just because we were giggling nervously and I was trying unsuccessfully to camouflage my large chunky plastic camera behind my back.

Really Awesome Idea Part 2: “Ooh, let’s go into the bars on this street and take pictures of unsuspecting drunks.”

I could tell that Christina was fighting hard to ward off the angel on her shoulder and after a few moments of consideration, she gave me a feeble and unconvincing answer of, “OK yeah, that sounds like….great….fun.”

The first bar I decided to crash was the Lockerroom, which could very well be an example of Brookline’s seedy underbelly, where an opulence of cocaine and menthol cigarettes can be found amongst gun-toting wife beaters (the men, not the shirts, although they’re probably wearing the shirts). The door to the bar is found at the bottom of dimly lit cement steps, the door itself unmarked and dark metal, giving the impression that what you might find on the other side could quite possibly be the ear-cutting scene from Reservoir Dogs.

I cracked the door enough to glimpse a sliver of the darkened bar, inhaled some of the stale air (possibly tinged with meth fumes), and promptly bolted back up the steps.

We continued to skulk down the sidewalk, looking like we were ready to hold up a mini mart, I’m sure, when we happened upon Gordon’s Lounge.

“Oh, this is it. This is the bar we have to go into,” I said lustily, imagining the awesome photo I could steal of the run down patrons. I lingered before the door, flip-flopping. “Here, you do it,” I commanded as I thrust the Holga into Christina’s chest. She later confessed that entering the bar under the pretense of undercover paparazzi was not on her Good Time Sunday Night agenda, but she did it anyway. Because that’s what friends are for — serving Erin unconditionally.

In her own words:

i went into the bar, (which by the way was no bigger than most people’s living rooms), acting as if i were looking for someone. this made me look like a complete moron since the bar was so small to begin with, and my over-emphasized room scanning was unnecessary. i made a big display of my disappointment in not finding whoever i was “looking for” and headed for the door.  as i opened the door, i gave one last look and placed the holga up by my shoulder… aimed it at all the bar patrons and snapped a quick photo. using my high school basketball skills, i turned 180 degrees and ran as fast as my fat ass would allow. 

While Christina did her thang, I ran away and ducked into an alcove next to a bank, a spout of mad giggles threatening to launch from my mouth, not to mention the urine that was surging through my bladder. I was employing controlled breathing tactics to steady squash my impending wet pantied-laughing fit when Christina burst through the doors of Gordon’s and came barrelling toward me, just as the father and his wheeled daughter passed us by again.

I was so humored by their need to skirt away from us (to the point of nearly walking off the curb) that I was inspired to snap a picture of their retreating bodies. The daughter noticed the flash and quickly spun around to look at us. The father sped up his pace and the two of them disappeared into the shadows of the next block. When I told him about it the next day, my work frienemy Collin said the man probably feared his daughter would be sucked into our lesbian cult, and I wanted to be offended by that but I laughed anyway.

I had grown tired of taking pictures, so I pulled the plug on the shoot and we turned to retreat.

“Wait — we have to walk past Gordon’s? You didn’t tell me that!” Christina looked slightly panicked, so I pacified her by suggesting we cross over to the other side of the street.

As we began our trek home, I peeked across the street and noticed that two people had emerged from Gordon’s. They stood on the sidewalk, looking left and right. I averted my eyes, wary of being spotted, but curiosity got the best of me and and I rubbernecked once more.

Now there was a throng of four patrons. One of them, a tall and bald man, spotted us.

“Hey!” he yelled.

He’s probably not directing that at us, I tried to assure myself. He’s maybe calling a taxi.

“HEY!” he shouted louder this time, causing a shiver to melt down my spine. The throng began moving, mirroring our steps from the other side of the street.

“Oh my god, he’s going to fucking murder us!” I tersely whispered to Christina. The man was still shouting at us. I looked around innocently, hoping that my body language conveyed that I wondered to whom he was shouting, because it certainly couldn’t be at the two sweet, demure women who were merely taking a nice evening stroll. Except that my harried motions all but screamed, “It was us! Over here! We’re the two you want!”

“What the fuck were they doing when you took that picture?” I cried, thinking that we know had photographic evidence of a bar-top virginal sacrifice.

“I don’t know, they were just watching the football game!” That explains it. Christina had a mask of fear on her face. “The worst part is that I look like a boy from across the street. What if they get as far as jumping me before realizing that hey, I have tits!?”

I stole another quick glance at the angry mob, cherishing the parked cars along the street that doubled as shields, and noticed that one of the women had pulled a cell phone from her purse and was dialing.

Holy shit, what if they’re calling the cops?, my inner voice added an extra punch pf paranoia. Or worse — what if they’re calling more drunk Steelers fans?!

“If they catch us, we’ll just deny it,” I blathered, attempting to shove the Holga down the front of my coat. I didn’t look obvious. Not at all. “Or…we can just fall back on the excuse I always use in  times like this: we’re playing a photo scavenger hunt.”

The throng of pissed off photographic subjects gave up after a block and a half, probably not wanting to miss any heart-stopping plays during the game, so we slowed down our pace and tried to relearn how to breathe.

A block later, a skeletal woman with dark eyes and a husky voice stepped out from a stoop and said, “I’m sorry, can I have a light?” As Christina reached in her pocket for her lighter, the woman found her own and excused our services.

“Decoy!” I hissed at Christina, who instinctively spun around to see if we were being followed. Henry refused to come pick us up, and the rest of the walk home was nerve-rattling. Every time a car drove past, I considered diving into a bush.

That picture better be fucking awesome.

Later that night, we drove around, me in the passenger seat with the pig mask stuffed over my head. Now that was a Really GOOD Idea. At every red light, I’d stare into the car next to us. It’s funny how determined people are to not look twice. I scared one guy into turning left, I swear to god.The best was when I had Christina pull into the Denny’s parking lot. She idled next to a window, and I was going to get out, but just staring at the diners from the car ended up being effective enough. One man sat, burger halted in front of his gaping mouth, and stared at me in disbelief.We went to Wal-Mart and terrorized the shoppers in the parking lot for awhile, but it started snowing really hard. “Nothing’s better than bacon in a blizzard,” Christina ruminated, sending me into a five minute crack-up. (At that point, it didn’t take much.)

On the way home, flashing lights loomed ahead of us. “Motherfuck, it’s a roadblock!” I screamed in despair. “They’re on to us!” It ended up just being three cop cars with someone pulled over.

We ended the night without getting beat up or arrested, but we had fun trying.

There are a lot of things in life that I would love to be good at, to understand, or at the very least tolerate. I’d like to be able to slice open a brain and turn it into a pretty bowl for cradling dip or perhaps a warm pool of gravy on Thanksgiving. I’d like to be able to snap my fingers. I’d like to be able to exist in the same room with Henry without finding thirty-two annoying traits he harbors.

But these are all dreams for a different day. Like perhaps, a day when patience pays a visit.

I decided to instead start at the bottom and choose something less complicated and patience-oriented to learn: Football. I know, I know, I’ve been down this road before. But I’m tired of people talking about The Game at work and asking me if I watched The Game and then following that question with a horrifying intake of breath and then a "What do you mean you don’t like football?" Plus, I really want to have a Superbowl party this year so that Henry can make dips and perhaps some delicious cocktails and any other time I try to have football-focal parties, I end up getting irritated when people, I don’t know, watch the game and stop talking to me? I’ve adopted the "If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em" mentality and I’m ready to do this. I want to scream and holler and yodel at all the right moments. (It’s hard to do that when you always stubbornly root for the opposing team and have no other cheers to piggy-back.)

Unfortunately, finding a teacher hasn’t been easy. Henry threw in the towel years ago, my step-dad doesn’t have the patience, and I was going to ask Kim but last week when she and Eleanore were listening to THE GAME on the radio, she sounded oft-confused and kept saying things like, "But why? WHY DID THAT HAPPEN?" and she seems to spend more time saying things like, "Oh that’s the guy I like he’s so hot" which is great! It really is — that’s the mindset I like to take too, but this time I’m really serious. Almost like it’s for a grade and if I don’t get an A, my parents are going to pelt me with searing hot coals and torpedos.

So my work frienemy, Collin, was brave enough to step up to the plate (that’s baseball, right?) and we met up at a bar on Sunday for some serious football schoolage. As I left the house, Henry called out from the couch for me to wish Collin luck. I’m not that bad. Jesus.

In between having valuable oxygen and elbow room stolen by a pack of older aged bar hags (and their fresh-from-the-links boisterous male counterparts) and having an intellectual discourse about the taste of blood (we both think it tastes decent), Collin actually did try to learn me a thing or two. He even went so far as to draw diagrams in my purple memo pad (from Rhonda!) and a purple pen; he looked even more masculine than usual.

I got distracted a lot though. I couldn’t stop fixating on the brusque bartender’s ill-fitting pants that kept slipping down enough to assault us with a flash of ass, and every time he would replenish my amaretto sour I would sing a "Yay cherry!" song in my head. Then I contemplated my good fortune upon seizing a quarter that the group of older people left behind; it was thrilling to take something that was theirs. I really did hate those people. This one lady was standing right behind me and kept cramping my style. She was the whore of the group, for sure; probably the girl who taught the other girls how to give blow jobs back in sixth grade. I bet she rides on the backs of Harleys and spouts off predictable double entendres, too.

"I’m going to go home and write a story where they all die," I whispered angrily to Collin. He laughed, but only because he probably didn’t know he was going to be part of the death toll.

Then Collin and I talked about how great I am for awhile too, because that was more exciting than watching football.

When I came home that night, Henry asked me what I learned.

"I learned that the one guy with the hair went to Pitt and that orange and black striped stick is what they actually see on the field instead of the bright yellow line we see on TV and that fifty-year-old women look like assholes when they try to dress like a twenty-year-olds, especially when they have husky voices and the physique of a body-builder."

"What?" Henry looked exasperated, but then erased it with a shake of his head. "What teams were you even watching?"

"Two red ones."

Later that night, I remember something crucial. "Oh! And I learned that there are about three feet in a yard."

"Not about three feet. Exactly three feet. That’s normal mathematics."

I’m still having my damn party, though.

I sent everyone at work my death row pen pal’s (severely outdated) website last night: It made Bob sad, Lindsay said "LOL," and Eleanore started lecturing and patronizing me. Oh OK, Pot-Kettle. I should have reminded her that she once married her inmate pen pal, but I digress.

It made me think about this other inmate pen pal I had a few years ago — Aaron. He was around my age and in prison for seven years for shooting a Mexican in the ass. I didn’t like him too much because all he wrote about was the rap music he liked, the skanks with kids who would come to visit him, and lifting weights.

He sure was cute though.

A few months into our postal courtship, and a year before his release date, I got this bombshell in the mail:

Erin,

I don’t know how to say this. I guess I’m just a chicken shit, and don’t like to say the wrong thing. I guess I like you more than I should. I think you are beautiful and I love your personality. You don’t have kids, and your [sic] normal*. I guess I’d rather be with you than be just friends.

I tried just being your friend, but I want more. I guess I’m greedy, but that’s me and who I am.

So I guess if you and Henry don’t work out, which I’m sure you will, but if not I’d like to give it a shot.

— Aaron

I wonder what he’s up to these days. Well, I guess it doesn’t matter, since I have a KID now. God, I’m such a whore.

*HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

After much careful deliberation, a considerable amount of mulling, and a brief engagement with hemming and hawing, I have officially decided to participate in No Name Calling Week. This futility workout will begin on January 21, at which point I will shelve my Tourette-ish need to call Henry an ass-fucking moronic dick-shitting piece of trailer trash with a second-grade level spelling proficiency who washes his underwear in a creek. I will not tell Christina she’s a dumb fucking fake Mexican lesbo God-fearing lame rapping banana-stuffed cunt. I will not call my child a Little Asshole.

Luckily, I can still punch the shit out of Janna.

I will be monitored all week by Henry, Christina, Janna and I guess I’ll have to tell some people at work, since that’s going to be a very crucial chunk of the week.

“I’m going to win,” I boasted to Henry.

“Somehow I don’t think the point is to win a prize,” he said, yet another ounce of his faith in me fluttering off to Heaven.

I think I might be biting off more than I can chew. I also think this is intended for school kids.

So, it’s here! I’m freaking out! It came at a perfect time, because Henry was napping, so I shoved it over my fat head and crept up the bedroom to give him a nice little surprise. And by crept, I mean that I clambered up the steps on my hands and knees, pausing every other step to squeeze back pee.

I couldn’t stop laughing, and I tried ever so hard to muffle it, but I only ended up making the inside of the pig’s snout very warm and moist.

Anyway, Henry was not sent spiraling into the land of heart attacks, like I had hoped. He rolled his eyes and quietly begged, “Please don’t show that to Chooch” (who was also napping), before rolling back over and pulling the covers up to his chin.

But I’ll tell you who WILL be taking up residence in the land of heart attacks: My boss, Kim. Everyone got to leave early Thursday night and I thought I was the only one still packing up all of my stuff. (Seriously, I bring half of my house with me in my giant purse, and then it takes me five minutes to stow everything back in it at the end of the night.

) When I was finally ready, I went to round a corner, where Kim was hiding behind a wall like a child and lurched out at me. I dropped some stuff, that’s how startled I was. I startle very easily. So my plan is to stash the mask in my gigantor purse and wait until late tonight, when all the dayshifters have left and our department is left in silence. I’ll wait for Kim to go to the bathroom, and then I’ll hide behind the door.

I hope she cries.

“Henry didn’t cook for me again; I had to have frozen pizza.

”

“Well, that’s better than nothing. Last time he didn’t cook for you, you didn’t eat anything at all!” Kim laughed as she went to heat up her delicious home-cooked meal.

It took me longer to figure out how to turn the box into a pizza cooker than it took to actually cook the fucker. I was so angry and near-tears by the time I was done, and the muscles in my hands hurt from tearing perforations and folding over flaps.

Tonight, I was daydreaming about going to jail. Just to hang out, you know? (And no, not on conjugal visit day! OK, maybe.) Walk in with a magazine and read aloud some Hollywood gossip while inmates do push ups around me.

Once I murder Henry, I suppose I’ll have a whole lot of time to do that.

Eleanore said inmates smear shit on the walls.

Last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the pig mask and all of its possibilities, even beyond its role in the photo shoot. I kept imagining myself driving around town with it over my head, and staring out the window at people during red light downtime. I was laughing so hard in bed last night that it was disturbing Henry.

“Just go downstairs and buy it now, please! So I can finally get some sleep.”

So this morning, I bought it. I even wrote myself a gift note for it.

I think I managed to offend Eleanore at work Friday night. I was telling my boss Kim about the Christmas tree I’ve wanted to fashion ever since I was a spry sixteen-year-old.

“And then I’d take extra arms and legs and solder them to the mannequin, you know — for boughs.”

Kim’s eyes widened, and she asked me if I’d be making my own ornaments too. Eleanore was in the kitchen for this part, but she returned just as I was explaining what Homies are, and how I wanted to make dioramic ornaments using them.

Realizing that Homies are slightly racial and that perhaps Eleanore was getting annoyed, I blurted out, “But they’re not all black! There are Mexican ones, too!”

Crickets. The slight bubble-popping sound of Eleanore’s blood boiling.

Always spitting out one sentence too many, I finished digging my grave by saying that I wanted to make a crack house ornament and have some of the Homies loitering outside of it.

“Damn, girl. You’re taking this too far, now!

” Eleanore groaned. “Don’t you be teachin’ my baby^[1] about no crack house!”

Then Kim and Eleanore tried to come up with a word to describe me. Eleanore muttered, “We’d need a thesaurus for that.” I laughed. Many appropriate words popped into my head, like: sweetheart, genius, loveable, adorable, precious.

I spent most of the night searching for cheap mannequins online. Every time Kim turned around, she would catch a glimpse of a variety of eerie plastic models on my screen and shudder. “Would you stop looking at those! They’re freaking me out.”

I’m going to decorate my (future) Christmas tree while wearing my pig mask.

[1]: Eleanore calls Chooch and everyone else’s children “her babies.”

Shit, I need this for the hillside picnic photo shoot. I need this badly! I found one on sale for $17, but I don’t know enough about masks to be certain this is a good deal.

Can you imagine getting raped by someone wearing that? Chilling. You know what I’ll be thinking about all night now.

Today, I sold a Lizzie Borden card and a 10-card set, which puts me approximately $30 closer toward my final destination of Romania. Henry’s not invited, since he wouldn’t take me to the hospital. He can have fun staying home in gay Pennsylvania while I’m off riding donkeys and wildin’ out on Romanian date rape drugs. I can’t wait to taste Romanian pie and pee in their toilets. With a little conniving and perseverence, this dream might be realized by next summer. It’s only my dying wish, you know.

It’s not too late to purchase holiday cards. Send me to Romania. If you’re lucky, I’ll get stuck over there and wind up living a meager existence hauling oats in a field with no Internet. And then I’ll lose a wager with a gypsy over who has a bigger ballsack – the town cobbler or the albino who lives under the bridge and inspires dark fairy tales – and next thing I know, I’ll have a gaping hole in my side and my kidney will be chilling out on ice. Don’t you want that for me? Tell people about my cards; make your dreams (and mine) come true.