Last Saturday, the weather was sunny and 70, so my brother Corey met up at Jefferson Memorial to take some pictures. We saw a wedding ceremony which we desperately wanted to crash, and we also broke up a couple’s romantic interlude near the pond we chose as our location.

The pond is my favorite area of this cemetery, but it also happens to be near the scene of one of my most traumatic childhood memories. I was eight or so, and was with my mother and younger brother Ryan. I don’t know if we were visiting some dead relative or just poking around, but I remember we were all out of the car and it was getting close to dusk. Because my mom enjoyed inflicting psychological trauma on her children even back then, she decided to lock me out of the car. Here is where I will state that my mom to this day insists (through streaming tears of laughter and delight) that this even never occurred and that I dreamt it all up, that I always had an overactive imagination. But that’s only because she doesn’t want me to get to the climax of the story, which is where she would only let me back into the saftey of her Blazer if I read her three names off the mausoleum wall.

This is fact; it happened.

Conversely, my mother likes to make up her own memories, like the one where I pushed my brother Ryan down the attic steps. She still swears that this happened, and I know that I was an evil witch of a child, but I never pushed that kid down the attic steps, I’m sorry. Not even after he drove his twenty-wheeled remote control car in my mid-back lengthed hair which subsequently resulted in my mother doing one hell of a number on my pretty blond locks with shearers. Not even after he caused me to suffer through years of inadequacy issues and brutal, bloody competition. (I was the better tennis player, but  my family never came to any of my matches so they wouldn’t know.)

Fuck, I hate my family. (Not you, Corey. You’re safe from my voodoo doll army.)

Wow, thank you Random Picture Sunday. I feel much better now.

A woman bid on and won a Cupcake Couple painting that I had donated to an animal shelter charity auction, and ended up liking it enough to ask me to paint a cupcake family portrait for her mom.  It was really fun to paint but nerve-racking, because hello – it’s a Christmas present for her mom. She hasn’t seen it yet and I’m freaking out that she won’t like it.

But still, my first family portrait.

Speaking of Christmas, I dragged Janna along to Toys R Us with me yesterday so I could get in some shopping for Chooch. Is it just me or does it seem like there’s not much to choose from anymore? There were only two or three things that really grabbed me, and everything else was little inexpensive stuff that we would get him for no reason other than he’s Chooch and hasn’t killed us today. (He didn’t make us bleed and only called me an asshole five times today! Stuff an apple in a pig, this calls for a feast!)

 I don’t really know what I was looking for – a Willy Wonka-for-sale to turn ordinary household objects into sugared bliss? A real life Beetlejuice? A portable life-sized circus complete with elephants and ring toss (and a hot bearded lady for mommy)? Maybe my standards are too high. But I’ll tell you one thing – these educational “toys” are taking over. All that Leap Frog shit, Discovery Channel schlock. What’s THAT about? I don’t want to LEARN while I’m playing! I want to be starting (pretend) fires (OK fine, I want real flames) and force GI Joes into the inferno to rescue my satchel of benzos, and then I want to sit back and laugh as I watch their frames drip and melt into a viscous mound of molten carnage. And then I want to sprinkle glitter on that shit.

Bring back fucking Micromachines, man. Sweet Secrets, those were the shit.I will admit that my eyes get all alit when I carouse the crafty aisle.

All those jewelry kits! I could make crappy rings to shill on Etsy just like an ex-friend of mine does!

I lost Janna for awhile in the Barbie section and then I caught her donning a Hannah Montana wig, but in the end, we managed to get to the register without sucking on anyone’s elbow.

Toys R Us is less magical, more sterile. I’m writing a letter to corporate.

They need to have leprechauns walking around with trays of cupcakes that make you float upon swallowing. Have  a unicorn grazing on sugared grass in aisle five. MAKE IT MAGICAL FOR ME, ASSHOLES. At least make it look less like a warehouse, shit. Fuck you, Toys R Us. You could at least give me a shitty balloon for stopping by.

I’m just not looking forward to it this year. I mean, I’m not like pouting about it or anything pansy like that. I just haven’t taken any Yuletide Spirit pills this year, is all. We still don’t have a Christmas tree. Last night, Chooch was asking me where his presents were because he knew that me and Santa had gone out shopping for him yesterday. I started to say, “Well, Santa still has to wrap them and put them under the—-” I paused to shoot Henry a scowl and wished I could halve his head like Silar on Heroes.

“—on the…floor? Yeah, on the floor I guess. Over in that corner there. We’ll just have to sweep up the cat fur first.”

And I don’t think we’re doing anything with either side of the family. His sister always seems to forget I exist, and obviously I’m still not speaking to my  mom. So I guess if the weather allows, we’ll go to a cemetery where we will frolick among bones and pretend like it’s not Christmas. Until I start whining that Henry didn’t get me a My Little Pony.

There’s a song by Some By Sea called The Saddest Christmas. I will probably be listening to that a lot. Oh, ho ho ho!

Although horror is my absolute favorite genre of TV, movies, art and books (and sometimes even music), I get all spastic and overly-paranoid when it comes to movies that are based on or inspired by true events. So while I’ve been wanting to see The Strangers since it came out, I’ve been putting it off.

I tried watching it alone Thursday afternoon before work. The sun was out, Henry and Chooch were napping, I thought I could do it. I lasted maybe twenty minutes. Nothing had even happened yet, really, but Liv Tyler’s character was alone in the house while Ben from Felicity (RIP my favorite WB show) went to get her cigarettes and the suspense was literally making my veins pulse and my heart was beating so fast that I was starting to not breathe properly, so I paused it and woke up so he could be my audience as I repeatedly screeched, “I CAN’T WATCH IT I’M SO SCARED I CAN’T WATCH IT PLEASE COME DOWNSTAIRS I’M GOING TO DIE THEY’RE COMING TO GET ME I’M HUNGRY MAKE ME A SANDWICH AND WHERE’S MY DIAMOND RING IT’S BEEN SEVEN YEARS.”

That night at work, my boss Dave took a side job as Heart Attack Giver and had me clutching my chest every fifteen minutes. He fucking gets off on terrorizing me with loud, booming noises and one of these days, I’m going to be seeking workman’s comp because of him. Then I mistakenly told him that I was even jumpier because I had tried to watch that movie, so that gave him even more ammo and I began wishing I had a periscope to guide me around corners.

I looked in the rear view mirror every two seconds on the way home that night.

Last night, with big strong Henry by my side, I managed to watch that damn movie from beginning to end, biting off my pinkie nail in the process and taking mental note of all the ways some asshole could conceivably break into my house. It didn’t do any favors for my blood pressure.

As I tried to fall asleep afterward, I told Henry for the twenty billionth time that I would really like to buy a gun. “One of those tiny girly ones. With diamonds.” (I feel like we’ve had that conversation before.)

“Yeah right,” Henry mumbled into his pillow, which is coincidentally the same thing he says when I ask for a ring, and we fell asleep.

Halloween is my all-time favorite holiday, but I think this is the most lethargy I’ve ever displayed. My head was full of big ideas, like maybe I’d have a costume party this year and actually put some gusto into decorating the yard (as Chooch sits on the couch, watching “Goonies” and spitting out “Oh shit!

“s every two seconds – real time play-by-play). I managed (with the aid of Henry power) to erect a slipshod cemetery against the front of the house, and I scribbled generic faces onto pumpkins which Henry then spent an hour carving, only to have the crazy Indian Summer-turned-snowstorm shrivel and mottle the fucking bastards. Then I thought it would be fun to dress Chooch up as David from The Lost Boys but only felt inspired to spend 20 minutes scouring the Internet for a toddler-sized trench coat before abandoning my search in favor of downloading some metalcore. Instead, I waited until the last minute before clicking a button, and a plastic-packaged Frankenstein costume arrived on my doorstop yesterday. Maybe Henry will at least paint Chooch’s face green to pull the costume together, but I won’t know since I WILL BE WORKING.

I always start thinking about Halloween in July, but then I get side-tracked by the forty-seven OTHER things I want to work on, and then guess what – nothing gets done. Halloween becomes half-baked just like the thirty books I’ve said I was going to write, the trip to Romania I said I was going to save up for, the kickball tourny I wanted to arrange, and the scavenger hunt I said I was going to organize. Henry keeps lecturing me, telling me I need to pick ONE THING and go from there, but instead, I have to do things my way and dabble in three different mediums on any given day and then I wonder why I can’t fucking sleep at night and why I find myself missing half of whatever TV show Henry and I are watching together because I’m staring at the wall, completely zoned out.

I think I need to spend one weekend alone, in a cabin somewhere.

Preferrably one that includes in its itinerary:

• a suspicious and unsettling gas station attendant a mile down the road
• a curious phone-line disconnnect
• a bear trap meet-n-greet for my feet while fleeing a murderous rapist
• an evening in front of a crackling fire,  full of psycho semen with an axe protruding from scalp

Last night, Henry and I were supposed to go to a haunted house when I was done working, but my mom and aunt (the begrudging babysitters) were already at my house when I came home, acting like it was second only to Hell as the last place they’d want to be so I was all, “You know, I guess we just won’t go then” so they flew out of my house with an eagerness typically reserved for a copraphagist in the midst of having a giant scat loaf churned out into his salivating maw.

So instead of being chased by chainsaws, Henry, Chooch and I went to the grocery store where we saw several shoppers clad in slutty witch costumes, clearly on their way to a party. I stared after them longingly, wishing I was going to a party too. I haven’t been to a Halloween party in years. I haven’t worn a costume in years.  I don’t care if I have to sit alone in a cemetery, dressed as Raggedy Ann, I should be doing something tonight and aside from working, I’m just not.

Chooch better get A LOT of Reese’s Cups tonight. Mommy needs something to eat while drinking herself into a stupor.

My brother Corey was home from college over the weekend and we had hi-falutin’ plans to get crunk, slap some bare asses, prance under a shower of Benjamins. In other words, we had tentative plans to go to a haunted house.

I met him at our mom’s house Sunday night, and he informed me that his friend Dave was on his way. In waiting, we stood in the doorway of the garage while my mom blabbered on about BlogTV, MySpace, tarot card readings and her spiritual advisors. “They want to have tea parties!” she giggled, joy-riding on the crazy train like she so often does. And then, “Oh, my favorite knife!” as she plucked a paring knife from the garage wall. True story. (Listen, I grew up in this house so a random wall-wedged knife isn’t too shocking.)

Ignoring her attention-deficient outburst, Corey chose that moment to tell me that he wasn’t driving. This did not make me a happy muffin. I whined things like, I have a car seat in there!, and But I always have to drive!, and But I’m really fucking drunk from huffing formaldehyde! Corey shrugged and stood his ground.

Dave arrived and Corey began walking over to my car. “I was serious about the car seat, dude. I don’t know how to take it out,” I called after him. (This is not a lie. I fail at motherhood.) Corey, remaining undeterred, jutted his lower lip and made his eyes have the pleading look of an orphan begging for more crust. So I batted at the damn car seat two or four times, and Corey and Dave both made feeble attempts, but even Henry blathering instructions via speaker phone proved to be about as helpful as a retard reciting the Kama Sutra in Swahili to a eunuch. Meanwhile, my mom just stood around and laughed, hiccuping on her psychosis.

“Dave, it’s not so bad, right? You can sit next to it, right?” The car seat is smack dab in the middle of the backseat, so no matter which side you sit on, you’re getting a hard plastic hug to your ribs. Dave was all, “Whatever, it’s ok. Let’s just go.”

So then we picked up their friend K.C., who sweetly lied and said she was so cozy back there, like it was an arm rest made from cotton candy and clouds. Dave chimed in that he had even forgotten it was there. I have sat back there before. Granted, it’s much worse and way more painful when the seat’s keeper is strapped in, but even when Chooch is being docile (yeah, that’s never), it is not a comfortable traveling condition.

Anyway, I tried to let it go and have a good time when we arrived at Demon House. Since it was a Sunday, there was hardly any wait at all and we ended up being the last group to go through. There were some legitimate scares, K.C. accidentally smacked my boob and then talked about it for a full five minutes, and I coveted all the Satanic art work. Some dude with a hooded face kept droning, “Igor wants your soulllll!” all up in my thang but I just laughed and said, “Yeah good one. The devil already has my soul.” Stupid ass.

But still, I feel like I would have had more fun if Corey had driven!

Of course I refused to let it go. I was intoxicated off annoyance. I’m Erin Appledale (Corey ridiculed my name choice, by the way, during the drive to Demon House. The drive in which he did not drive, but rode comfortably in the passenger seat. It reminded me of another bonus of the name change: lengthening the distance from my family.) and everyone knows that Appledales like to drunk rollerskate, fellate exotic things, and dwell on every small bump in the road. Sometimes we go hog wild and drunk rollerskate over those bumps while doing the fellating.

After I came home that night, I was recounting the horror of the car seat to Henry. “I can’t believe he made them ride like that, he’s so mean to his friends,” I scoffed.

Henry laughed. I mean he LAUGHED, and then said, “Wow, sounds like someone else I know.”

My new job has been really great so far. I’m working in the evenings as a biller for a large shipping company. I won’t name names, but you know them. There are four other billers, all older women, who only work two nights a week. I like working with older women because they mother me, and we all know how I like that. When I first met one of those women, I was immediatley charmed by her bubbling, down-home personality. Then she sat back down at her desk and asked, “Where’s my clipboard? Where’s my FUCKING clipboard?” It was awesome.

However, it only took one evening there for all the flashbacks to come pouring in. This environment has so many striking similarities to a job I had in my early twenties – the Bad Job, the one that gave me no choice but to retreat to the EEOC, the one that left me with a stuttering problem, an obliterated self-esteem, an inability to enter the workforce for almost three years. Just like at that place, I’m working in a testosterone-driven environment. I’m working around drivers with bad tempers, foul mouths, and inappropriate behavior. I’m being trained by a woman who reminds me so much of my old office-mate at the Bad Job, that I have to shake off the flashbacks and snap back to the present.. I’m listening to the squeal of fork lift wheels and dock workers hounding us to hurry up with the bills. I’m listening to my boss shout “Where you AT??” from the dispatch room and suddenly I’m sitting at my old desk, in my old leather chair, thumbing through invoices.

I never, in these past four years, thought the day would come when I would find myself missing a place that has plagued me with countless nightmares and panic attacks. But I do. I miss the drivers and the meat cutters and one of the salesmen, and I miss kicking the copier and being a perfectionist when making the weekly flyer, even though I knew no one gave a shit about its aesthetic appeal. Sometimes I even miss working with Henry – that’s the place we met. My new job is making me nostalgic for the things that didn’t suck about that job. And there were a lot of things that didn’t suck. Basically, the only things sucking were the owners of that job, and the unfortunate part was that it was my life on which they were sucking.

So last Saturday, I decided I was ready to go back. Four years seemed like a long enough time to heal, and I really needed some sort of closure. So Henry called the office that morning, made sure the owners weren’t there that day, and we stopped by with Chooch. The only person working that day whom I knew was Gary, my favorite salesman. There were days when it seemed like Gary, out of everyone in that office, was the only one on my side. He saw firsthand the way I was treated. Sometimes he was treated the same way.

Gary let us into the upstairs offices and we sat around in the break room, catching up. Everything smelled the same: walls embedded with the lingering aroma of too many chickens fried, too many cigarettes puffed, sweaty stench of too many loitering drivers. Everything looked the same: putrid hue of puke splayed across the walls, microwave circa 1972, coffee-stained counters, misspelled names on lockers.  Everything seemed the same, except for my office: walls bare of Robert Smith’s mug, comics I drew out of mad cocktails of rage and boredom, magazine articles of my favorite bands. My old office is bland now, no personality.

Mainly, I sat there in the break room and smiled, tried to act like it wasn’t bothering me. But it was fucking surreal and brutal, like being donkey-kicked in the belly by a gnome on steroids. So I sat there, listening to Henry and Gary dish about the meat business, and I looked around at all the lockers and considered slipping notes into the ones of the drivers I knew, but for some reason, I couldn’t make myself walk into my old office to get a post-it. For some reason.

Chooch ran down the hallway at one point, forcing me to follow him. He stopped right in front of the door to the conference room, where my replacement was sitting at the computer. We made eye contact, and time was suspended in a horrifying abyss, like a body hung up by hook-pierced flesh. I smiled tightly and gave him a curt “Hello” then whisked Chooch back down the hall.

We left after Gary was summoned to the cooler. In the car, I promptly put on my sunglasses so Henry wouldn’t see that I was crying. It was harder than I imagined, and the nightmares have returned. But I just had to know, I had to see it again. Like an ex-boyfriend that you need to see for closure, but end up seeing his new girlfriend too and it just tears the wound open all over again.

I wish I could still get away with rockin’ sweater dresses. I’d try it, but I have a sinking suspicion I’d look more like a mountain of scrotum covered by a rumpled sack than a cute 80s throwback with whom you’d want to double dutch. Maybe if I crimped my hair and decked my crown with a neon green floppy bow, it might distract from my stumpy legs.

Finding this photo made me think about all the other dumb fashion trends I bought into (read: my aunt Sharon bought into and projected onto me). Along with side ponytails and Punky Brewster hi-tops, I used to collect these cute and colorful plastic charms.  They either were from Kinney’s or David Weiss, but each charm had a tiny bell and clip that allowed them to be attached to a strand of coordinating multi-colored plastic links. I took pride in my blooming collection of unnecessary trinkets, ranging from a cuckoo clock to a can of hair spray. When I wasn’t using the clunky strand of plastic as a whip or trying to garrot my baby brother with it,  I would belt a jean skirt with i and jingle my way through a day of Kindergarten.

I had forgotten all about that fucking annoying leash of neon plastic until my grandma unearthed it a few months ago. Most of the charms had fallen off years ago, being in the brutal hands of a destructive child, but about eight charms remained intact on a short fragment of the chain.

Well, that was until I brought it home to Chooch’s lair. He’s since ripped every platsticized piece of 80’s nostalgia from the chain. Occasionally, I step on one and kick it under the couch in frustration because it’s like by having a child, I was duped into signing some secret contract, with a calligraphy pen wetted by afterbirth, stating that I will do nothing but pick up fucking toys all day long and that if I do not have a stooped back by my thirty-second birthday, I am fucking up my duty as a mother and will be relegated henceforth to the nearest Fantastic Sam’s where I will be drugged and supplied with the standard close-cropped Mom Bob.

Last night, we were chilling out on the couch, rubbing our meat fists together with fervor as we anticipated the start of the twenty-fifth VMAs, when Chooch (completely speaking out of turn, that little bastard will be mopping the basement floor tonight) said, “Mommy, look!”

Now, by seven in the PM, I have heard the pairing of the words “mommy” and “look” more times than my sanity is realistically able to comprehend, and I just don’t think any two words should ever commingle that much, unless they go by the names “sex” and “party”.  So, keeping my glazed eyes suctioned to the gyrating images and pornography of color and sonic diabetes that MTV spoon feeds me daily, I mumbled, “That’s great, Chooch.” But he kept chanting it over and over, louder and louder, angrier and angriest, until I began subconsciously flinching because I’ve grown so accustomed to having chunky pieces of toy parts chucked at my cheek bones. Fearing another bruise, I looked to see what he was desperate to show me.

A tiny plastic revolver charm.

I used to wear a cute little replica of a weapon around my waist. To school. To Kindergarten. I probably wore that to church at some point too. And how people probably wouldn’t have batted a lash at it. I mean, it was sold in kids’ clothing stores.

So I laughed about that for awhile, and joked that it could have been the catalyst to my present obsession with death and murder and violence.  Then I laughed while thinking about a kid nowadays, in the year 2008, sporting the likeness of a revolver to school and not having it turn into a Very Big Deal.

Tell me about YOUR childhood fashion style!

So I was interviewed for today’s spot over at Etsy Spotlight On. Go check it out!

Today, I got to hang out with Lisa. She’s visiting from Colorado and I was lucky to rank high enough on her social ladder to score a visit with her. Over iced Chai tea and strawberry cake, we talked about how I should have one more kid (Lisa’s suggestion, and it made me laugh myself to death), we talked about the varying hues of menstrual blood, about how she couldn’t taste the strawberries in her cake yet mine was bursting with succulence, and we talked about how we’re going to party like heathens when she moves back to Pittsburgh in hopefully less than a year. (OK, that was mainly my suggestion, at which Lisa laughed herself to death.)

I birthed an entire being made of joy and g-spots when I saw an announcement for the upcoming Chiodos show in one our city papers. Lisa, annoyed that I interrupted our grown-up conversation with a fan-girly shriek straight from the pages of Teen Beat, was like, “OK. I don’t know who that is.” I hated her for a little while after that, but then she distracted me with, “Hey, you look good, by the way,” which opened the gates for an ecstatic sermon on the Gospel of Jump Rope. I seriously might die without that fucking rope. Or WITH it, due to my jumping mania and fury.

Lisa and I have drifted apart several times over the years, mostly because we consistently choose different paths. She chose “graduate”; I chose “drop out”. She chose “Christianity”; I chose “none.” She chose “abstinance”; I chose “like rabbits”. Our lifestyles have clashed at times. She left my nineteenth birthday party marathon because it was lewd, debacherous, drug-laden, and overpopulated with underage drinking. I rarely visited her at Bible College because happy people would try to hold my hand and I couldn’t smoke anywhere on campus.

But through the past few years, we’ve come closer to meeting in the middle. I thought she would have freaked at the idea of me having a bastard son, but she never once criticized me, or judged me. She loves my Chooch and is a huge Henry advocate.

Between sips of her latte, she was telling me today about an issue she had with some guy she met, how she emailed him and prefaced it with, “As your sister in Christ…” followed by a dissertation on faith. A few years ago, I might have once laughed at her for being such a God homo. But today, I have a greater respect for her as a person and for all that she’s accomplished, so I just laughed inside my head.

I love Lisa.  I love her so much that I use a song she absolutely abhors as her personalized ring  tone on my Blackberry. And THAT is how you know I love you – through torture.

To commemorate my day with Lisa:

 My favorite Lisa memory is circa 1997, during the spring of my senior year of high school. I was tooling around town with my friends Jon and Justin, killing time before meeting up with the rest of our motley crew later that night.  Justin came to a realization.

“Shit! ICP is playing at Laga tonight. We should go.”

Being a yo-girl at heart, I had no objections to his spontaneous suggestion, until our previous engagements crept into mind.

“But we’re supposed to go over Melissa’s tonight and watch movies with her and Lisa, remember?” A far cry from the havoc we could potentially wreak at a concert, but an obligation nonetheless.

“We’ll just get everyone to meet us at Laga instead.” Jon’s solution seemed so simple, but he was forgetting something very important.

“Lisa’s not going to go for that,” I sighed. The aforementioned Lisa was, and still is, a Christian who just could not get down with the likes of ICP. Becoming a juggalo was not something Jesus would do. (Maybe not her Jesus. My Jesus would have helped pen some of their rhymes.)

 “I have a plan,” Justin said. He dialed Lisa’s number and confidently urged her to put movie night on hold in favor of what could potentially go down in the annals of Very Special High School Moments.

“What is an ICP?” Lisa asked suspiciously.

“They’re a band. It stands for…Intensely Christian…Punks.” Lisa, having a soft spot for non-secular punk bands, called everyone else and informed them of the changed plans.

There were six of us that night, all sardined into Jon’s car. Half of us were giddy to be going to a concert; the other half were giddy because we got away with a lie in order to go to the concert in the first place.

As soon as ICP took the stage, Lisa was chagrinned. “They don’t look like punks…?” she yelled above the crowd of undulating and rioting juggalos. Once they started rapping and she heard their lyrics, she edged back from the stage. Once they started spraying the crowd with Faygo, accompanied by lewd and suggestive gestures, she migrated back some more until a wall prevented her from retreating further. She probably had quite a few dialogues with God that evening.

When the show was over, we all tiptoed over the puddles of Faygo left to coagulate into sugary stains. Lisa, the bottom of her Vans slick with the liquid, slipped and fell down the steps.

Best night ever.

• Having all the fun
• Emarosa
• My sparkly Converse (would be so much hotter if red):

• Staying alive. (As in “to not die”, not the song. Sidenote: that’s my least fave Bee Gee’s song; “How Deep Is Your Love” all the way)
• Not drinking Chooch’s floater-laden backwash
• Writing serial killer poetry
• The brazen audacity of Bela Karolyi that would get lesser men put on China’s hit list, so much that I took twenty minutes out of my super-busy day to make this graphic, which is going on a t-shirt so my boobs can do the boasting:

• Learning to play the kazoo as well as my son
• Jonny, my jump rope (even with a suspected swollen spleen, my feet could not resist skipping his sinewy piece)

Your turn.

A mysterious commentor named Amber asked me some questions after I posted that meme thing the other day.

1.) If your life was to be made into a made-for-tv movie,  who would play you?

RuPaul, hopefully. Even though I’m a shortie. And white. With a vagina. And my hair is not nearly as fabulous. Wait, can it be animated? If so, Patty Mayonnaise, no questions.

2.) Who has been the most influential non-relative in your life?

I don’t know. I guess the writing teacher I had in eleventh grade, Mrs. Mercalde. I never took writing seriously (not like I do now), but I took two of her classes as electives, just for the hell of it. I don’t know what kind of crack she was smoking, but she liked my drivel and encouraged me to keep doing it. Of course, because I’m a stubborn asshole, I didn’t write for like, five years after that. But she’s the reason I keep haunted house journals.

3.) If you had to eat one food item/menu item for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Flax seed.

4.) Your cell phone, your home computer, your mp3 player. Pick one and tell us why?

MP3 player, duh. How else could I jog in the cemetery to the soulful melodies of Norma Jean and Horse the Band?

5.) Where do you get these super-creative ideas for your stories?

The stupid pictures people send me, retaining sentence fragments I hear throughout the day, and the rest is stream of consciousness.

That was fun, let’s be doing it again soon.

One of them there interview memes was going around on LiveJournal, so I got my friend Lauren to interrogate me. Because I really like talking about myself. Could do it all the livelong day.

1. Is there any one thing that you feel fostered your macabre-ness?

I think it’s inherent. My mom was majorly into Halloween when I was growing up and my family watched A LOT of horror movies. It’s still my favorite genre, so I guess that’s probably the main external influence that holds hands with my macabre gene.

Nightmares have plagued me for as long as I can remember, as well, so I probably subconsciously draw from that a lot.

2. Which serial killer would you love to kick back a few beers with and why?

If this a dead or alive question, then Dahmer. I bet he’d have some killer recipes that I might need someday (see #5).

No. Wait. I’m changing my answer. Ted Bundy. Beers lead to sex and Jesus Christ, Bundy is hot.

3. Are you planning to have more children?

NO.

4. If you had to choose only one CD (that wasn’t a mixed compilation) that you could listen to for an entire year, what would it be?

13 Ways to Bleed on Stage by Cold. That album reminds me of the beginning of my relationship with Henry. We road-tripped a lot that summer to see Cold, my favorite band at the time (and still in my Top 5 even though they’re now defunct). He knew how much they meant to me and I’ve always thought it was awesome of him to go out of his way to make sure I could see them as much as possible. So, if I had to be reminded of the same memories for an entire year, I’d want it to be those ones, and that album.

Plus, we were still getting to know each other and he hadn’t begun hating me yet. Oh haha. Good times.

5. Would you ever eat meat on a regular basis again? I mean, you’re not living with your Mom, so her pork chops aren’t part of the equation.

Not if the meat came from an animal. Though, I can see myself in a fit of rage, hacking off Henry’s weener and then engaging in some passion-eating. And if anything is a gateway into cannibilism, it’s got to be a nice boiled cock. In fact, I’m dining on a thick vegetarian sausage right now and pretending it’s a juicy wang. So yes, I could chow on a person. Possibly even on a regular basis.