I kept saying that I didn’t want to do anything this weekend.

“I don’t want to do anything this weekend,” I said to Henry. See? It happened. And these words were like the theme music of NCIS to Henry’s ears. This is all he ever wants to do on the weekend: NOTHING! I really thought that was what I wanted too. We have been doing so much lately that I was starting to feel a little run-down, physically and mentally, anyway. So aside from taking Chooch to his piano lesson Saturday morning, nothing else happened that day aside from binge-watching HBO while it was free and screaming at the hockey game.

I WAS SO FUCKING BORED.

The next day, Chooch went to the neighbor kid’s birthday party, which was right next door so we didn’t have to do anything but open the door and boot Chooch out of it. It was glorious! But then I became immediately bored again. I left the door slightly ajar because all of the jackass birthday party kids were running around outside the house making me super nervous and annoyed and I needed to adapt my role as Crotchety Bitch-Neighbor in case something happened that would provide me an opportunity to run outside and chew out some dumb kid.

About an hour into the party, someone started to knock on my door, which blew open because of the wind; this left me in an awkward predicament because I absolutely hate answering the front door but now whoever was knocking could basically see into my house.  DO YOU WATCH THE FOLLOWING!? It seems like every motherfucker that opens their door for someone gets stabbed to death. I don’t want to get stabbed to death. WHO DOES? (I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of people who do, but they’re probably singing Crash Test Dummies song(s) while coloring walls with their feces in a mental institution.) I figured it might be one of the parents, that Chooch probably fucked up somehow (he’s my kid, after all), so I exhaled and bravely pulled the front door open the rest of the way.

It was an older man looking for his missing cat. RED FLAG, right? Total Yinzer, dishelved, possibly a little buzzed, and definitely dressed worse than Henry. So, your basic Brookliner. Whether it was true or not, I indulged him while he struggled to not only describe the cat, but remember her dumb name. (Tia.) And then he struggled some more to tell me where he lives, which is literally like 5 houses down the street.

“OK, we’re the first house down there that has a porch that sticks out. Do you see the porch sticking out? Maybe you can’t see from here,” he squints real hard, practically hemorrhaging while digging in his brain for a house number. “OK, you see that gray car? Not the one on the street. The gray car in the driveway. That’s our house past the driveway.”

I promised him I would keep my eyes open for his car and we shook hands after he told me his name is Gary. He was just about to leave when I reminded him to watch his step. (Our front porch steps are all crumbled on one side and are hopefully about to be repaired soon. The landlord knows, and I hope he doesn’t want a law suit. But maybe he does. Maybe getting sued gives him an erection.) At my simple suggestion, Gary took that as an invitation to pause and study the porch.

“You know, I painted one of these porches awhile back,” he said. And it suddenly all started coming to me and I knew exactly who he was.

“I remember that!” I exclaimed, because he and his weirdo brother-in-law (who lives next door to him) kept me wildly entertained that day with their half-crocked banter. “Hey, do you by chance have a cat named Teddy?” I asked.

“Teddy! Yeah, he’s dead now though. He was a good cat!”

“He really was!” I agreed. “He got my cat Marcy pregnant in 1999,” I explained.

“Oh, no! Do I owe you kitty support?” he laughed, and we went on to talk forever about cats. I told him that Teddy used to come and sit on the windowsill after Marcy had the kittens, like he wanted to check in on them, but Marcy would go absolute ape shit on him through the screen. She used to make these terrifying, gutteral screams that I have never heard from a cat before.

Don looked exactly like his father Teddy.

“Hey, you should come over in the summer and go swimming!” Gary suggested happily after finding out that we’re basically in-laws. That is definitely not going to happen, but I cheerfully went along because CATS! What a great topic.

Something like 15 minutes later, I was pulling the door closed behind me just in time to find Henry on the couch cracking the fuck up.

“What?” I squealed. “We were talking about CATS!”

“Have fun swimming at his house this summer,” Henry tried, and failed, to say without laughing.

That’s one of the few times you will ever find me not resisting human contact.

***

I still wasn’t feeling 100% myself (obviously something was wrong with me if I willingly spent time small-talking with a neighbor) but it was really nice and sunny out that afternoon so I made Henry go for a walk with me.

Jo’s Salon decorates for every holiday. Love the bunnies and sexy Jesus-in-a-basket!

There used to be this totally sketchy bar on the Boulevard that you had to walk down steps to get to, basically a rape-trap, but it was closed down (I think there were a lot of drug busts there) and now it’s some strange church-thing.

I was hoping that this would the day I could finally get Henry to go inside the African market but he’s still being a baby about it. Aside from him being secretly racist, I’m not sure WTF is going on with Henry and the African market. Maybe he tried to get them to sell Faygo and they laughed at him?

So we went to Pitaland instead. I used to be inexplicably terrified of that place, but then I learned that they have the freshest dates around, and also a super-hot guy working there named I forget now but he is really handsome and I like to remind Henry of that fact every time we go there.

Cactus pears & nub-things.

I got to witness some incredibly old man with a walker pick up a box of Mediterranean candy and honest-to-god bellow, “WHAT THE HELL IS THIS” before slamming it back down. Dude, they’re ANGEL KISSES AND THEY LOOK DELICIOUS SO STOP SLAMMING SHIT.

(Henry just responded to my urgent text. The Hot Pitaland Guy’s name is Marvin. Thanks for paying attention when I kept dreamily saying his name in your ear yesterday, buddy.)

Then I made Henry buy a container of these delicious looking powdered pastries that the non-Marvin Pitaland guy described to us in a bored mumble. Turns out they were $10 and DISGUSTING. I couldn’t taste anything but ROSE and the choking was almost as terrible as the time Janna tried to drown me in rose water at the Palace of Gold.

Back outside on the Boulevard, I stopped abruptly and tried to take a picture of this guy standing in front of the red door of one of Those Weird Churches, but I wasn’t fast enough and he had already started to walk down the steps. I was so upset that I missed such a great photo-op, but Henry was perplexed and annoyed.

“What the hell are you trying to take a picture of!?” he hissed, wanting to continue on so we could get home already.

“The way that man was standing at the top of the steps, it was such a Jesus pose!” I cried irritably, knowing he wouldn’t understand.

And he didn’t.

It’s funny that all this religious stuff was happening on our walk because I just ordered a bunch of religious candy to stuff in plastic eggs because it’s time for another EASTER GLENN HUNT! Just a little while ago, I made a Veronica’s Veil Glenn and a Hot Cross Bun Vendor Glenn. I love religious Glenns.

This was when we were fighting about who likes dates more.

“I’ve been eating dates since before you were born!” he bragged.

“YEAH WELL I ATE DATES IN MOROCCO!” I cried and then kicked him, because that’s what I do. But then we started reminisicing about the date milkshakes we drank at a date farm in California, so that was nice.

***

Almost as soon as we got home, Henry “suddenly” got a fever, WTF? So he spent the rest of the day in bed which affects me greatly because no one was available to make me dinner. I kept calling him, and I could hear his phone start to ring (he has a Dance Gavin Dance ring tone for me and I didn’t even download it on his behalf!!) and then it would stop suddenly because that dumb motherfucker was DECLINING MY CALLS. So then I would march upstairs and be him to come down.

“Just order pizza,” he mumbled in a (fake!!!!) fever-induced drawl.

“THEN I HAVE TO ANSWER THE DOOR FOR THE PIZZA GUY!” I wailed.

“Oh my god, tell me you are not even crying right now,” he sighed and rolled over, putting his dumb blanketed back toward me.

I ate a dumb bagel and Chooch had Apple Jacks. Sorry kid, but I’m not one of those broads who rises to the occasion and suddenly knows how to make a roast. (Not like Chooch would ever eat that anyway.)

I was telling Barb about the dinner tragedy today and she asked me something dumb, like, “Did it feel like Henry was burning up the bed?” or something.

“Yeah, that’s funny,” I laughed sarcastically. “I slept on the couch last night because I didn’t want to get sick.” And Barb looked like she wanted to say something about that but then remembered who she was talking to, so she kept it at a simple, “Oh, Erin.”

Way to ruin the whole entire weekend, Henry. You’re so selfish.

My brother Corey and I have had plans for several weeks now to  take a tour of Nemacolin Castle on Sunday. I was really excited because it seems like the kind of place perfect for giggling in corners while old people on the tour finger doilies and say things like, “Oh my!” when given historical facts. Also, we were going to have lunch at a place where we could also buy a firearm and have our computer fixed.

However, when I went to Nemacolin’s website yesterday to verify that I knew where the hell we were going, I was met with large red letters that stated:

Nemacolin Castle is Currently Closed While It Retools For Christmas Candle Light Tours!

Whomp whomp.

I texted Corey, who was equally as devastated, but we refused to give up. We tossed around ideas of touring a mine and some park in West Virginia that has rusted farm equipment strewn about. “What about a winery?” Corey suggested and I was definitely on board with that. There is one that’s actually in the same area as Nemacolin, but Corey called and they aren’t doing tours because some asshole had to go and leave town.

Then I found one closer to Pittsburgh and nothing about it really seemed all that revolutionary or postcard-worthy, until I found it. The Picture.

And then this happened:

So then it was determined for sure that the Narcisi Winery was going to have to show these two motherfuckers around its facility. Because now we were OBSESSED. It HAD to be this winery! No other!

I called this morning, because I learned on the website that 48 hours advance notice was needed for a tour. When I was greeted by an elderly woman, I knew, JUST KNEW, it had to be Broad.

“Tour?” she repeated me in a very WTF tone. “Oh, I don’t know anything about that.”

I insisted that I saw it on the website, and at that point I could hear her shuffling papers around.

“Oh, I don’t know what the hell happened,” she disgruntedly sighed, and then began asking me normal reservation-ish questions, such as “how many people?” and “will you be having lunch also?” so I began to feel hopeful. “OK, Roberto will call you back and either confirm or, I don’t know, tell you otherwise, I guess,” she said, and suddenly my Boob of Hope started to sag a little. In the meantime, Corey and I were having a texting flurry.

“This sounds very promising that Broad will be there,” he said, “and possibly a guy named Roberto.” So then we suddenly also became obessed with Roberto.

Dorothy called me back herself and I knew it was going to be Bad News Bears when her tone had suddenly changed from Harried Wine Pourer to Sympathetic Grandma. Turns out no one was going to be there on Sunday to give a tour, but there was one tomorrow at the same time. I told her I’d have to call back after discussing with Corey.

And when I did, a very bored-sounding guy answered and was like, “That’s great. You’ll have to talk to Roberto.” AND THEN I GOT TO TALK TO ROBERTO!

Mean Amber2 told me that she’s been to this winery numerous times and, in her typical “You’re a dummy!” tone, she said, “I DON’T THINK THAT THEY GIVE TOURS THERE, ERIN.” She loves making me sad. But too bad Sandy and I had just had a conversation about this and SANDY said that her mom recently went there on a bus with old people and that she had a wonderful time and the winery provided lots of fun activities for them.

So now obviously Corey and I are hoping that we get to play wine BINGO.

“I hope there actually is a tour,” Corey texted me after I told him about Mean Amber2’s tour-ignorance.

“There better be,” I replied. “Roberto made me pre-pay.”

Anyway, Mean Amber2 knew exactly who I was talking about when I asked her “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE OLD LADY.” Mean Amber2 insists that we should see Broad as soon as we walk in, because she’s the wine pourer.

“She’s always there,” Mean Amber2 said. “If you don’t see her—”

“—she’s DEAD!” I interjected.

“Um, yeah. Or, she’s just NOT THERE,” Mean Amber2 said meanly.

She didn’t know Roberto, though.

Later, she even emailed me a picture of her from the website and asked “Is this the woman?” No, that’s the BROAD, Amber. God.

So. yeah. The whole point of this is that my brother and I will be going to a winery next Sunday, but unlike normal people who visit wineries for the wine-tasting and wine-learning, we are going for a broad, Roberto and a fucking Tuscan sundae.

And potentially BINGO.

Corey’s senior picture. Janna comes with the package.

After we toured the Palace and the grounds, I was super adamant about eating at the cafeteria. I am obsessed with the cafeteria!! All cafeterias!!

The cafeteria (Govinda’s) is located about a quarter of a mile down the street from the Palace, where the Temple and Hare Krishna lodging can be found. Right across from Govinda’s is a courtyard and it was teeming with Sunday worshipers who all stared at us because, short of flashing fanny packs, everything about us screamed NOT ONE OF YOU.

Inside Govinda’s, we became immediately confused. First of all, we were the only non-Krishna people. Second, there was no clear instruction on what we were supposed to do, so we all kind of stopped and slammed into each other as soon as we entered the door. Then we did what all socially adjusted people do and whispered uneasily to each other like we had just been kicked out of the back of the Scooby Doo Mystery Van and landed on the threshold of a haunted house.

“Ask if they have the buffet,” I hissed at Janna, who sighed and asked the young Indian girl at the register by the door.

“Oh, no,” the girl answered with a laugh and WHY DO I ALWAYS FEEL LIKE PEE WEE AT THE ALAMO EVERYWHERE I GO. I know I reference that all of the fucking time, but it’s because it’s true. “You may choose from our limited menu,” she said, Vanna White’ing her hand toward a black dry-erase board next to the counter. The undulating question marks in our eyeballs must have been pretty clear, because she added, “Would you like me to explain everything to you?”

We all sighed and shook our heads eagerly as she slowly explained in her best dumb white folk words what everything was. I still couldn’t understand half of it because I’m dumb with ingredients and wound up just picking something at random. Corey ordered something similar to what I got, I think our breads were the only difference, and Janna went with the safe bet of samosas because even dumb city folk know what samosas are. You can buy them in the freezer section!

Since Janna drove us there that day, and it’s kind of a long haul, I paid for her lunch. (And Corey paid for her Palace of Gold tour.) I wonder if she wrote about it that night in her diary, because Corey and I don’t generally do nice things for her.

We chose a booth far away from the other people already eating, and waited for our food over a soundtrack of our own nervous giggles.

A waitress (maybe the same person as the cashier? I wasn’t paying attention) set down Janna’s samosas and a tray that looked remarkably like hog slop and baby vomit, so I knew it was going to be good Indian cuisine, but Corey and I were unsure whose it was supposed to be. I thought she said something that started with a “d,” which is what my choice started with, so I dramatically stopped Corey right before he started eating.

“I THINK THAT MIGHT BE MINE!” my inner fat girl beast cried. So then we had the daunting task of waiting for the waitress to return with the final meal so that we could finally put this minutes-long mystery to bed.

I was right! It was whatever I ordered. But Corey’s ended up being tastier than mine, so who’s laughing now.

We didn’t have silverware, not that Janna needed any for her samosas, but it was kind of difficult for Corey and me to dig in to our lunches.

“I think maybe they don’t believe in forks,” I said honestly, trying to fashion my naan into a serving apparatus, but only succeeding in staining my fingertips orange like I had just smoked fifteen year’s worth of unfiltered Pall Malls. This went on for awhile, Corey and I alternating quiet exclamations of “ouch” every time we burnt ourselves on curry. Meanwhile, we kept darting our eyeballs around the cafeteria, craning our necks to see if any of the seasoned Indians at the nearby tables were also eating with their hands, but everyone seemed to be finished eating at the moment.

“You know,” I said, shaking the pain off my fingers, “maybe I’m confused. I think it’s the Ethiopians that eat with their hands.” And just then, another Govinda’s patron walked over to the kitchen and grabbed a plastic fork out of a bucket; Corey and I totally lost it. Eating lunch became a lot easier after that.

Even though I was too stuffed to finish my meal, I kept harping on Janna to go up and buy me dessert. She totally didn’t want to, but I can be very persuasive. There were these golden balls of wonder that I was dead-set on devouring, so Janna returned with a container of those and a regular old push-pop for herself, which made me laugh because how much more Caucasian can one look in an Indian restaurant than by licking on an American summer delight? And then I found out that the golden balls of wonder cost about as much as Janna’s lunch, totally negating the fact that I treated her, so then I was performing the simultaneous trick of laughing and choking on balls, which is something I mastered my junior year of high school.

Anyway, these balls were made of chick peas, cashews and honey. They were an oral treasure, in my opinion. Corey kind of liked them, but not enough to finish the one I gave him, and Janna took one bite and then handed it back to me. MORE FOR ME.

After lunch, we crossed through the courtyard, which was now suspiciously empty, and walked into the temple. There were shoes splayed all over the floor and on the shelves in the shoe room, but only three people were in the temple itself. One was an old white man who looked like he definitely has been foraging in the mountains his whole life. I wanted desperately to take his picture, but that motherfucker never took his eyes off me.

The shoe:person ratio is all the evidence I need to know for fact that these deity statues are feeding on human flesh. You’re not fooling this girl, New Vrindaban society. I’m on to you.

There was an Indian couple in the temple with us, and from a short distance away, I spied the man ladle some sort of liquid into his woman’s palm, which she then brought to her mouth and DRANK. I needed to do this too, so I lingered casually in front of a eerily realistic statue of Swami Prabhupada and waited for them to leave. Then I pulled Janna over to the bowl of hopefully-not-poison and made her try it first.

“It’s just like, rose water,” was her official Yelp review. So I allowed her to dump some of it into my palm, and then I immediately gagged and thought for sure I was perishing as the intense floral notes clogged my windpipe.

“Oh my god, what did you do?” asked Corey, who had just re-joined us after selling his soul to the Cult of Krishna by making accidental eye contact with one of the manga-like deity statues. Janna explained to him that I saw other people doing it and I’m sure she rolled her eyes too but I couldn’t tell since I was pretty much blacking out at that point.

Corey started laughing. “You were peer-pressured into drinking weird flower water?!” YES, PRETTY MUCH, OK?!

Janna had to use the bathroom in the temple before we left, so Corey and I stood outside and talked about her, obviously. Suddenly, a peacock trotted over from god only knows where, and it looked like it was going to start to head into the temple. I suggested that we try to usher it into the bathroom with Janna, and Corey thought this was the best idea since the Nintendo Power Glove, but there were two Hare Krishna people standing nearby so we thought maybe it wouldn’t be the hottest idea to disrespect their token animal while standing in front of the temple, no less. Even us Kelly kids know when to draw the line.

After the temple, we walked off some of our curry-heavy lunch while paying our giddy-yet-horrified respects to the Dancing Acolyte statues on the other side of the creepy (one lone) swan-infested man-made lake. Hidden by trees behind the statues sat a cabin which had eerie Krishna tunes wafting out through the screened windows. I wanted to climb up the hill and peek into the windows, but Janna was like, “No. Don’t.”

The last stop on the agenda was the gift shop back up on the Palace of Gold grounds. I bought a religious ring and a pretty blue bracelet that everyone at work has been admiring and I say, “Thanks it was like $5 at the Palace of Gold!” and then I think that might kind of mar their opinion. But anyway, on the way back to the car, Janna was crossing the street at the same time a car* was coming. I shoved her out of the way while screaming, “JANNNNNNNA!! LOOOOOOK OUTTTTT!” I mean, I SCREAMED it. Corey had already crossed the street and was standing next to Janna’s car, so he whirled around to see what the fuck was happening, and then he started laughing really hard, because what I didn’t know yet was that the doors to the minivan parked next to Janna were open and about 10 Indian people were standing there looking horrified.

*(It might be conducive to the story to explain here that the car was like, a lot of yards away and going 15mph.)

Of course, they were standing on the side of Janna’s car that I had to get into, so it was extremely embarrassing and I was literally squealing from trying to hold back my laughter. At that point, I was also crying. So I opened the backdoor of Janna’s car and pretty much dove in, nearly spilling my container of golden balls of wonder on the floor of her car. Corey and Janna got in and once all the doors were shut, we collectively lost it. Well, maybe Janna wasn’t laughing that hard, but Corey and I were doubled over. I think Janna was probably just more exhausted from having spent so many hours with the Kelly siblings.

****

Once Janna dropped us off, I came into the house and tried to recall the day’s events to Henry, while choking on another golden honey ball of wonder and having to squat down to keep from peeing; I was a hot, giddy mess. Chooch took one look at me and then went back on the computer.

Henry didn’t think any of it was funny, nor did he think I was a hero for saving Janna from vehicular manslaughter. I guess he had to be there.

Henry and Chooch are at a birthday party (one of Chooch’s many girlfriends, I guess), and I just couldn’t sit around the house any longer.

So I walked aimlessly around Brookline for almost two hours.

I know I bitch about this town a lot, but there is something really quaint about it if you can look past the Yinzer accents and drug busts.

There was something going on at this church and really loud, scary singing blasted out of the open windows, probably in hopes of brainwashing heathen passers-by. Sorry, Church. Considering I came home and licked Satan’s face, I’d say you failed.

I called Henry several times on my walk and hung up on him because he was asking stupid questions that I wasn’t in the mood to answer.

This chair is for sale for $14 and I want it!!

If you’re ever trying to stalk me, you can often find me walking on this street.

This dude had the Steelers game on super loud. I couldn’t see where it was coming from but I want to believe it was a transistor radio.

The guy who lives in this house is old, Polish, and has like three unmarked white vans and stares me down every morning.

If I ever go missing, maybe look there first.

Ever since I went to the Palace of Gold, a Hare Krishna compound in the hills of West Virginia, I’ve been promising my brother Corey that I would take him there. And then Janna wanted to go too, and I had all of these wonderfully dark visions of her getting “taken” by the Hare Krishnas and spending the next eternity singing and selling books at some tiny county airport in Idaho. Spoiler alert: That didn’t happen. :(

But goddamn if we didn’t have the best day ever anyway!

NO SHOES IN THE PALACE.

Janna was asking me about the peacock stained glass before the tour started, and I was like, “Oh, you will learn about the significance of the peacock during the tour.”

The tour was much shorter this time around, mostly because we had the most apathetic, exhausted tour guide in the joint, and all she said about the peacocks was that there four stained glass windows in their likeness. Thanks, we can count.  Corey and I could have been more blatant with our clandestine photo-taking and she probably wouldn’t have cared.

I’m not going to reiterate facts, but if you’re interested, perhaps my post from last year’s tour will enlighten you. Although it is likely mostly just full of smack-talk for the other people in the tour group. You know how I do.

Luckily, there were three middle-aged Indian men on the tour with us, and the one would occasional offer me extra information about the things that the guide was glossing over. They were really kind and I was relieved because when we first walked in, I thought for sure they were going to write us off as ignorant crackers. I mean, not that we aren’t. But it was nice of them to give us a chance.

I mostly tried to not make eye contact with Corey because I knew he’d make me lose it and then we would end up doing our weird gang-laughter in the middle of the echo-y marbled halls of the palace.

I noticed the grounds seemed to be in the same state of disarray as they were last year, so I guess they don’t get as many post-tour donations as they’d like to. I feel like organizing a 5K for them. What? Everyone else has a 5K! Why not the Palace of Gold?!

Let’s run for Krishna, you guys! Or from. Maybe that will be more fun. Running from Krishna and chubby little Butter Thieves in the backwoods of West Virginia. I’m going to organize this. I’ll let you know when you can sign up.

The rose garden is so fucking creepy to me. I’m sure it’s something that is universally considered to be beautiful (it’s won awards, after all!), but it just seems like a really bad scene to me.

I took this picture just for Chooch, who hates butterflies. Always thinking of my son. What a great mom I am.

I got stuck on rose thorns right after this and Janna had to rescue me. Also, if I look drunk, it’s because I was DRUNK ON LIFE. (Seriously, I really look that dopey most of the time, though.)

We laughed like total hyenas for like 10 straight minutes because of this picture.

Corey took this when I wasn’t paying attention and I’m not sure what was going on, other than I was fixing my shoe and probably being eaten by rose bushes, but I love it. Also, I was wearing two different sets of stripes and polka-dot pants because I can. It enhances the fun.

Krishna kat.

OMG here’s Swami Jannamanama emerging from the Hare Krishna bathroom stall! She didn’t appreciate that I immediately posted this on Instagram but I was like, “What? It’s not like you’re nude.”

Up next: Awkward cafeteria dining, peer pressure rose water, and those giant statue things again. Meanwhile, I’m going to try and get Corey to guest post about his experience!

Oh, Brookline. It’s hard to believe that I have been living in this…colorful Pittsburgh town since 1999. There are times when I get all high and mighty and rant about how I can’t wait to get the fuck out of Brookline and how it’s so trashy and full of Yinzers. But the reality is that Brookline is not entirely trashy—there are some really nice streets with nice houses that do not have tires and rusty car parts decorating the yard. My friends Gina and Elissa live in Brookline and they are not trashy. Nor are they Yinzers. I just get so angry living here sometimes, on this particular block, and start casting aspersions every which way and now everyone probably thinks I live in a trailer park next to a swamp. I should probably stop doing that because it’s been long enough now since I moved out of Mommy’s big suburban sprawl that I shouldn’t have this judgey outlook on my crappy town anymore. I mean, yeah, we found a discarded syringe strewn in the grass alongside our house one day, but you know, it only happened that one time!

(Ugh.)

And recently, thanks to the two years Chooch spent in Catholic school, I learned that there is an entire ward of uppity rich assholes who also reside somewhere in Brookline, can you even imagine. Probably somewhere us poor people can’t access, I’m sure.

I think Brookline must have been really something back when all the old Irish people were my age.

To be honest, I’m pretty certain we will wind up staying in Brookline, even if the time comes where we can finally buy a house. It really is entertaining, and so fucking close to everything I need: the fucking trolley, both of our jobs, CVS, the post office, dive bars, hoppin’ breakfast spots where you can get any style potatoe (sic). But it’s the cast of characters that make it awesome, especially in summer when we can sit on the porch and know for a fact that we will be seeing our nearly-nude hyper-tanned ex-lawn cutter Joe or cop cars flying past en route to a drug den. (No more Robin, though; she moved a few summers ago and it was pretty much the worst day ever for me.) Brookline is like a gathering den for weird people. There was, what I thought to be anyway, a rumor about how when patients were discharged from one of the local mental hospitals, they were put on a bus and only given enough fare to make it to Brookline. My friend Bonecrusher confirmed a few years ago that this is actually kind of fact-based, because Brookline has several rehabilitation houses that take in people like that, and one of those houses is literally two houses up from me. I really lucked out.

For instance, we have a new addition to our tenement-esque block: some middle aged man who lives in his small red truck which he parks on the road. I’ve been referring to him as Truck Dweller, and one day I caught him a having a conversation with Purple Pants! Purple Pants speaks to no one, so that’s how I know Truck Dweller is special. I see him every day when I leave the house for work, sitting in the back of his truck with his transistor radio. Sometimes, he knocks on the door of the house he parks in front of, so I guess he knows them well enough to ask for a cup of sugar, I don’t know.

Saturday was a really good day to be living in Brookline. First, there was some stupid race that ran past my house so we got to mock the walkers from our bedroom window. And from there, I encountered some new and old savory Brookline specimen, including Purple Pants and Tourette’s! I even compiled a video for you, mostly because I’m still obsessing over that Christopher Cross song I heard last Sunday while getting ice cream; it had been years since I heard it, you guys, so now I need to spread it over my blog like a gooey yeast infection!

But first, some things to note: There used to be these two fucking bitches working the counter at the Brookline post office and they made it the most unpleasant experience anytime I had to—GOD FORBID—ask them to slap a stamp on a package for me. I haven’t seen them in months. During the week now, there is a quiet, efficient man with salt and pepper hair who doesn’t mess around with small talk and that’s perfectly OK by me because I have nothing to say to these people other than “no” when they ask me if anything is fragile or perishable. I guess they save the ultra-happy guy for Saturdays. I had my phone in my purse recording for about 3 minutes while I was in there, and holy fuck did he laugh a lot!

“Let me guess….Erica?” he asked after he smoothed a stamp across the box I was TRYING to mail in peace.

“Wha—?” I started, unnerved as usual that someone was frivolously speaking to me.

“I was just trying to guess your name,” he explained, pointing to the “E.Kelly” scrawled in the return address on the package. “I feel like I’ve seen a lot of mail for Erica Kelly when I’m sorting,” he added, punctuating his stalkery statement with that boisterous laugh that kept making me feel like I was on some stupid hidden camera show. (Is that even a thing anymore?)

I told him it wasn’t my name, but he was still studying my return address.

“You’re getting a new mail carrier!” he shared. “He starts today, actually.” Now I was starting to feel like he was trying to keep me there longer so he could win at some reality game.

“Oh, really? That’s cool,” I said. What do you say to the prospect of a new mail carrier? Just get my mail to me at a decent hour, and don’t shred my Alternative Press when you shove it into the mail slot, that’s all I give a shit about.

“Don’t get too excited, he’s not that good.” And then that laugh again, which followed me out of the post office like the sound of a clown operating a rape kit.

Later that evening, we took Henry’s mom to dinner at Amel’s, which is kind of in Brookline. I don’t really know what it’s considered. But it’s close and has a neon light shish kebab splayed across the facade, which has always enticed me in the years I’ve lived mere minutes away. Yet this was my virginal Amel’s experience. The interior was dark, full of mismatched florals and incongruously modern light fixtures. I liked it.

And I totally had a crush on our waiter.

“He keeps coming over with his hands behind his back, like he’s HIDING SOMETHING,” Chooch practically screamed across the entire dining room.

Judy has been watching Chooch for us basically every goddamn day and all those two do is bicker. They were in the middle of a semantics disagreement when the waiter came over and interrupted. “We’re like oil and water,” Judy muttered to the waiter, whose name may have been Lee but who even cares? He reminded me of this guy from The Carrie Diaries, but with less-Rebel Without a Cause-y hair.

Anyway, god only knows why Judy would choose to spend one of her off-days with us. I GUESS SHE LOVES US, YOU GUYS. What a novel thought. Someone should teach my family about that.

Still, by the end of dinner (after a huge dessert debacle during which Chooch and I couldn’t decide on the same thing to share until Henry finally shouted, Jesus Christ, each of you just get your own thing!” probably because he knew he would be finishing off our scraps anyway, but the strawberry coconut cake I wanted ended up being all gone at which point Chooch laughed raucously at my sadness, only to have some chick come back to tell him that his stupid cake was unavailable too HAHAHA), Judy only half-joked that Henry take Chooch home before taking her home because she lives farther away and was basically saying, “I’ve had it with your son for the evening, please relieve me.”

Meanwhile, I had already been planning on walking home (maybe like a two mile walk, because I went the back way instead of walking the short way which is on a busy, sidewalk-free main road) because I essentially have a slight eating disorder now where after I eat something that doesn’t have Weight Watchers point on the side of the box, I panic and think that I’m going to gain two chins back, so I have to hurry up and do some form of physical activity STAT. Walking home definitely wouldn’t eradicate that blueberry cheesecake I ate, but I knew I would at least feel less slovenly. Chooch agreed to walk home with me, which is where we spotted Purple Pants!

Chooch never stopped talking the entire walk home, which took about 30 minutes I guess. We made it home before Henry,w ho of course had locked the deadbolt before we left the house that day, and I don’t have that key. Just the regular house key. So we got to sit on the porch and act like we meant to do that.

Janna came over later and the three of us walked to CVS to rent Evil Dead (it’s so convenient having a Red Box so close, especially now that I know how to use it!) and on the way back, I spotted Tourette’s approaching so I pretended to care about what Chooch was ranting about (the Dessert Debacle, apparently) just so I could capture a piece of Tourette’s. I’m sad he wasn’t randomly shouting, “YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!” to the shrubbery, though.

That night, after we finished the movie, I took it upon myself to walk it back to the Red Box since the idea of that cheesecake was still Riverdancing around my love handles. On the way there, I passed an older man walking with a cane, and we exchanged pleasantries. Since I don’t walk with a cane, I ended up catching up to him on my way back home, so I crossed the street instead of having to awkwardly walk around him. What? I didn’t want him to feel bad that he can’t walk as fast as me!

So I returned home and was sitting on the porch with Henry and Janna when Cane Man finally made it to our block. As he was walking past our house, he stopped and asked if any of us had any cigarettes. We said no, and I was like, “He should ask Truck Dweller!” because the other day I saw Truck Dweller sitting in his truck with an entire cigar box full of cigarettes and I bet he rolled those sons of bitches himself, too.

“That was Truck Dweller,” Henry said, and I watched in disbelief as, sure as shit, the man with the cane walked a few more paces down the sidewalk and climbed into the small red pickup.

“OMG I SPOKE TO TRUCK DWELLER!!” I shouted giddily, and Henry told me to shut up.

And all of that was just to say, “Here, watch this 1:30 minute video I made!”

Sometimes, Brookline, I really fucking love you.

(And of course the irony to all of this is that I’m the fucking weirdo running around taking pictures and videos, not them.)

When I woke up from my spinny ride coma, we were in Ohio and it was sunny. Henry said he found a place to eat that received good reviews on Yelp, but when he pulled into the parking lot (directly across from a truck stop), I think he was reconsidering the source.

I’m sorry, but I’m not going  to turn down the chance to eat at a restaurant that features old people praying over their food on the sign. And thank god we chose to eat there because it was fucking weird in that wood-paneled townie-hangout sense. The tables were covered with thick vinyl tablecloths in shades of the 1970s (browns, browns, oranges, and browns) so I knew this place was either going to have really fantastic home-cooked meals, or serve us congealed slop like that fucking cafeteria in Moundsville, WV.

Our waitress was this Midwestern Joan Cusackian prototype, something straight out of a 1980s indie movie who was eager to recommend her menu favorites and I wanted to give her all of my monies as a tip. She even had the official waitress stance: hand on one hip, other hip cocked, head slightly tilted.

This was probably when they were having a conversation about how badly I stress them out. Look how tired Henry looks, ahahahah.

Not praying over his food.

Chooch’s Bowl of Meat. I guess his dreams of becoming a vegetarian are long-forgotten. He basically orders sauce-less spaghetti just so he can get the meatball, and then Henry let him have some of his ribs. I sat there and daintily ate my veggie burger, not judging.

Meanwhile, some man at the table next to us laughed. Chooch immediately shouted, “OH GOD DID YOU HEAR THAT MAN’S LAUGH?!” and then exaggeratedly mimicked his guffaw. This man was sitting so close to us that I could have reached out and touched him, so if he was aware of this blatant mockery, he chose to ignore it like a pretty, pretty Christian.

“What? I learned this from you, Mommy!” Chooch cried at the exact same time Henry was wearily mumbling, “He learned this from you.”

OK then. Next lesson: “subtlety.”

Look at the décor in the place! It was all Jesus and sheep, everywhere. I wasn’t sure if I was expected to actually pray over my veggie burger. I don’t even remember how to say that grace thing, to be honest. Yikes.

After soaking up my Waldameer’s stomach acid with homemade chocolate peanut butter pie (which I said I was going to share with Henry and then basically left him one modest forkful because I guess I had more room in my gigantic stomach than I wanted to admit), we embarked for Windsor, Ohio: home of the (supposed) world’s largest statue of Mary.

Henry was pissed off when the GPS began labeling roads as “Road.”

“This better not be like that fucking cuckoo clock,” he threatened, referring to the time in 2010 when I made him go waaaay off route on our way home from Michigan so I could see “the world’s largest cuckoo clock” in some scary Ohio village and it ended up being abandoned in pieces in an empty lot. I’m obsessed with Swiss/Bavarian/German shit so it was worth it to be anyway, but Henry was pretty annoyed.

The detour was about 30 minutes off the highway, along horror movie roads and run-down farms, but we finally made it to some establishment called “Servants of Mary,” which made Henry start bitching about how I led him straight into the arms of a cult, but I think it was actually a convent.

Funny thing about Henry: most people assume I’m the huge sacrilegious whore of Satan, but he’s actually adamantly against all religion and hates partaking in my obsession with all things holy, which I enjoy for the aesthetic appeal only (at times even being brought to tears by religious art—there, I said it). Henry won’t even watch exorcism movies, or any other horror movie involving the church. I tried to get him to talk about it last night but all he would say was, “I JUST DON’T LIKE THOSE KINDS OF MOVIES, OK” so I have obviously taken this to mean that he was possessed and exorcised when he was a child in the 70s, holy fucking shit, Chooch might actually for real be borne of demon seed.

When I posted this photo on Facebook, my friend Octavia pointed out that it looked like Mary was being hoisted up by a horned Elvis surround by teeth. Accurate!

It was dusk by the time we arrived and no one was around. The statue is so far away from the road that we couldn’t even see it at first and Henry started to get all barrel-chested and was about .0005 seconds away from screaming, “WHY CAN’T YOU EVER CHECK  TO MAKE SURE THESE PLACES ACTUALLY EXIST?!!?” But then I walked a little bit closer and saw her sitting there, way out past the nondescript brick church and gift shop. (So sad that the gift shop was closed. Imagine the bounty I could have brought home!)

Chooch and I started running toward Mary, which made Henry all ruffled because apparently this shit is on someone’s farm and he didn’t want us getting out of line. Like we would ever embarrass him!

“This is super creepy,” Chooch whispered as we got closer. And it really was. It reminded me of the dancing acolytes at the Palace of Gold in West Virginia. I get that these things are supposed to be beautiful and celebrated, but my god, why do they have to look like they come alive at night?!

All kinds of devotional bullshit was strewn at Mary’s feet. Henry was getting antsy because Chooch and I wanted to look at every single thing and the sun was setting faster and faster and OMG HENRY WAS GETTING SO SCARED OF THE DARK.

Arm hair sufficiently raised now, thanks.

I have to say, I’m glad it was so late when we arrived, because it really added to the ambiance. I bet during the day, droves of old people come out to sit on benches and rifle through their fanny packs for tissue into which to soak up their old people post nasal drip. But at dusk, it was FUCKING SCARY! I had goosebumps the whole time. And not the TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL kind, either. But the “Holy fucking shit I’m approaching the Neverending Story Riddle Gate, fuckkkk I’m going to die tonight” kind of goosebumps.

These illuminated bulbs are meant to be a rosary encircling a small lake.

Teacher: Chooch, what did you do over the summer?

Chooch: I saw a scary Mary giant and tried to steal coins out of Jesus’s hand. Duh.

I mean, it is pretty impressive! And Chooch and I both agreed that it was totally worth the detour. “But I’ll probably have nightmares,” Chooch added, and Henry just frowned.

We passed an open barn on the way back to the car and freaked out when we heard rustling from within. I was waiting for the crazed owner of the land to come out in full Wolf Creek mode and feed us to Mary, but it turned out to just be rabbits in cages. Which will probably be fed to Mary.

After a morning spent breakfasting & Bordening in Fall River, we began our official trek back home to Pittsburgh. This included a million miles of Connecticut. I had decided months ago that we had to stop in Mystic, because I thought we had a nice time there when we visited in 2002.

I guess I thought wrong, because aside from eating at Mystic Pizza (which Henry wouldn’t let me do the last time because he sucks) and shopping, there wasn’t much going on. I refused to pay to do shit at the Seaport, and the gift shop was full of shit I didn’t care about, anyway. I’m pretty sure you have to be wearing Dockers to give a shit about Mystic Seaport.

This place is a total tourist trap, thanks to the fact that it was the inspiration behind the 1988 Julia Roberts movie Mystic Pizza. But I really loved that movie when I was a kid and therefore, I had to eat there even though I wasn’t in the least bit in the mood for pizza.

The staff at Mystic Pizza could have very been cardboard cutouts on wheels. No personality and not memorable at all—a stark contrast from the waitstaff we encountered everywhere in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, with the exception from the weird broad in Salem who treated us like illegal aliens and acted like she couldn’t understand a word of our exotic Pittsburgh-speak. (And we don’t even have the typical Pittsburgh Yinzer accent!) The teenage hostess stared at us with deadened eyes and made me feel so uncomfortable. But, from her standpoint, we were clearly tourists (none of us were wearing boat shoes) so she probably knew we were there to gawk.

At what? Framed movie stills upon the walls? It really wasn’t that big of a deal.

But the pizza was pretty good, you guys! I don’t know if I’d consider it a slice of heaven, because that’s typically something sweet and pillowy, but it was pretty good as far as pizza goes.

So if you’re ever in Mystic and aren’t bothered by standoffish waitresses and TGIFriday-esque interior design, go have yourself some fucking decent pizza.

Yes, I’m available for commercials. Well, my cardboard cutout is, anyway.

Here, let’s ask Henry if he liked it:

[I’ve been waiting three hours and he hasn’t responded, so I think that translates into a “NO COMMENT.”]

To Chooch, it was just a restaurant. WTF does he know about “coming-of-age tales” and Lili Taylor? Kid hasn’t even seen “Say Anything” yet.

Yep, it was just a restaurant in which he pooped.

Afterward, we went to get ice cream, and when I say “we,” I mean that Chooch and I yelled to Henry what we wanted and then frolicked off to never, neverland while Henry had to stand in line with people wearing Dockers and boat shoes. Then he turned around and started screaming at us because we had the NERVE to choose a picnic table that was furthest away and god forbid Henry should have to transport our frozen delights ALL THAT WAY so he made us move closer. This angered Chooch and me because we happened to like the picnic table we chose.

“Excuse us for wanting to sit somewhere we could privately converse while looking out into the water,” I hissed at Henry, who gave me a “get serious” look because he knew we were actually sitting over there and making fun of people and probably talking about totally hedonistic topics.

It was still Really Hot, so Chooch’s ice cream began to melt immediately. Dripping Ice Cream Clean-Up is the one part of parenthood I graciously let Henry have. He’s good at mopping messes, literally and metaphorically.

Henry, Life’s Janitor.

Firestarter.

From Mystic, we made our way to Waterbury to see my friend Jessa. I was so stoked about this, but also nervous as shit because we’ve never met in real life before! Just in fables and fairy tales. And usually when people meet me for the first time, I’m your basic Mystic Pizza waitress.

Jessa and I first met online back in 2008 when she stumbled across my blog. In fact, she was probably one of the first non-LiveJournal friends I made on Oh Honestly, Erin. She was blogging regularly then, and we quickly became friends through that and Twitter and then once we discovered that we share a love for similar bands, it was a done deal. She is my musical kindred spirit (Isles and Glaciers, FTW!) and we are always lamenting that we live too far away to go to shows together.

The original plan was to visit her at work, which I was on board with because she works for a florist and now that I’m into raising plants, I was going to buy a new one to add to my office orphanage. But as per the norm, we were behind schedule (I blame Henry and his 30-minute Best Buy pit stop in Rhode Island when he was like, “OK! FINE! UNCLE! I’m buying a fucking GPS.”) so Jessa was already home. I wasn’t sure if she’d want to let in some Pennsylvania Internet riffraff into her home, but she was like “bitch please” and that is how Chooch wound up in his slice of Heaven: a house with 6 cats, 2 rabbits and cagefuls of birds!

“This is going to be the only part of the vacation he remembers, just watch,” I laughed as he made himself at home and scavaged around her house for cats.

He gets that rudeness from Henry.

Downton Bunny and Hopkins meet.

Anyway, it turned out to be not awkward at all! We hung out in her kitchen for about an hour and it was so easy!

Chooch was like, “This house rules, I’m staying.”

I even let her take a picture with me!

Hopefully we get to hang out again soon, and that her husband Simon didn’t think we were totally creepy vagabonds. I was sad that he didn’t talk while we there because he’s from New Zealand and Chooch could have added another accent to his collection. Henry later observed that he thinks he and Simon would probably get along pretty well, because Henry also doesn’t choose to speak much and he pointed that out that Simon was watching some dude-centric television show that Henry has also watched at some point, and I guess it really doesn’t take much more than that for two dudes to find each other in this world and start calling each other “cuz.”

Henry’s strategy for the next leg of our trip was to “keep driving for as long as possible until we reach Pennsylvania.” Somehow, we ended up staying at the same Red Roof Inn from our trip to Knoebel’s last spring and this totally blew my mind that we went from Connecticut to here, because I do not understand how maps or geography or Our Country Tis of Thee works.

Chooch and I are still wearing our Knoebels wristbands from April 27th so I thought it would be a brilliant idea to go there the next day and see if we could sneak on some rides but Henry just frowned and shat upon my sparkly brilliance. I guess he had already met his year’s quota of fun and any more merriment would probably put him in his grave.

The next morning, we ate breakfast at Mom’s Dutch Kitchen and I was so giddy about this because I was vetoed the last time I tried to eat here.

It was so creepy inside! Super crappy gift shop, an irritable old waitress who scowled as soon as she saw we had a kid in tow, and dusty Easter decorations on the windowsill.

But it had a peg game! Henry was glad about that.

We wised up and coaxed Chooch into ordering cereal because at least we know that’s on the short list of shit he’ll eat. The waitress was agrivated about having to list his choices, but at least she wasn’t a blank personality! She actually reminded me of how Henry’s mom must have been when she was a waitress. God, I wish I had been around for those days.

The food was good, though! Better than chain restaurant breakfasts, because it had that DUTCHLY HOME-COOKED FEEL to it. And no one got sick afterward.

And that was it. We got home around 2PM and I nearly smothered Marcy’s spirit right the fuck out of her. I MISSED HER SO MUCH!!

I’m still going through post-vacation withdrawals though. I miss my faraway friends! Big ups to anyone who managed to read all of these posts! You might be next on my list of people to impose upon visit!

One long lady.

Hey! You! Tired of reading this yet? Don’t worry, I’m tired of writing it! But I’m almost done. Probably just two more posts to go. WE WILL GET THROUGH THIS TOGETHER!

We departed New Hampshire on the mornning of June 24th, making our way back into Massachusetts way behind schedule, but Professional Driver Henry reminded me that if we had left the hotel as early as I wanted, we’d have been stuck in the rush hour commute to Boston. I was not happy about this wrench in my plans.

We arrived in Salem sometime after 11:00 I think and immediately stopped at the Witch Museum. I felt that it was really imperative for Chooch to suffer through the hour-long presentation with other strangers, most of which happened to be French tourists and required translator headphones. The woman I was sitting next to was using a pair and I would occasionally hear parts of it when the French narrator would raise his voice to put emphasis on all of the ACTION that was unraveling.

Henry and I spent an entire day in Salem back in 2002 and being there this time around made me realize that my memory either sucks or I purposely blacked a lot out because Henry and I used to fight so much back then. Because I didn’t remember SHIT about anything we saw in Salem. Henry kept saying, “Yeah, don’t you remember…” and my response every time was, “Nope.”

I did, however, remember the glowing red circle in the middle of the museum floor, commemorating all of the names of the victims during the Salem witch trials, because I had a really terrible coughing fit while everyone was gathered around, trying to learn about some witch shit. At least they changed it so now everyone gets to sit down. I mean, if I’m paying to get into this so-called museum, the least you could do is give my fat ass a bench.

<Insert lesson witches here.>

Ironically, the second half of the tour was led by some old broad who was having a coughing fit. There was also a crying baby. And rude French women. And here I was worried about Chooch acting inappropriately.

Afterward, Henry had to go feed the meter and instructed us to walk to the visitor’s center on our own. We made it about five feet before coming to an alley, at which point I clotheslined Chooch and said, “WAIT. Let’s hide from daddy.”

So we stood just inside the mouth of the alley, giggling like evil assholes, doing pee jigs, waiting for Henry to round the corner so we could jump out and make an even bigger spectacle. (There were already old people across the street watching us nervously.)

“It’s taking him so long!” Chooch sighed.

“Yeah, I don’t remember the car being that far away,” I agreed, starting to get agitated.

“I’ll go check it out,” Chooch declared seriously, like the appointed superhero for Fathers We Want To Scare But Are Missing. Meanwhile, I dialed Henry’s number.

“Where are you?!” I screamed when Henry casually answered, not at all sounding like a parent who just left his peeps alone in a strange city in 100 degree heat.

“Just walking down the sidewalk, behind some people acting like assholes.” And I turned to find him walking toward us from the direction we were supposed to have walked before getting sidetracked by something more devious. So then I had to go and retrieve Chooch, who was still trying to contort his body around the corner of the building like a human periscope. I hate when Henry thwarts us.

He pretty much didn’t walk with us for the rest of the day.

Stopped at some café and got an iced maple latte fuck yes!  And Chooch got a strawberry smoothie because that’s his “thing,” apparently. Who cares what Henry got. Something boring.

Stopped at Count Orlok’s Nightmare Gallery to ogle some of horror movie favorites, and then hit up the cemetery, natch.

I mean, it would be weird if we went on vacation and didn’t visit a cemetery, right?

Chooch was mad because there were approximately 87 different haunted attractions that he wanted to check out, but we didn’t have time. Kept trying to tell him that we’ll probably be going back in October, but he was beginning to reach the Dickhead Precipice.

Someone littered their empty coffee cup in the cemetery and I was so pissed off about it. You don’t leave your trash in a cemetery, especially not one so old and historical! So I quietly gulped and picked it up and then proceeded to be stuck carrying it for an entire 4 blocks before finally coming across a garbage can, I was so fucking pissed off.

“Don’t you have enough pictures of your kid in a cemetery?” asked everyone who has ever read this blog, even once.

Town Hall, I guess.

Seriously, look at how far ahead of us Henry stays! God, I’m offended.

I deemed it imperative to find the post office before we left so I could finally get stamps for my postcards since the Fireside Inn LIED about having stamps! (Actually, they did, but they were supposedly “locked in the manager’s office” and he wasn’t in yet. I guess they have a stamp theft problem in Nashua.) Not surprisingly, Salem’s post office was all big and grand. Exactly how all post offices should be, and not tiny cement shoeboxes full of defeat and deadened eyes like the one in my dumb town. While Henry stood in line for stamps, Chooch and I took that as our cue to clamor up the marble stairs and check out the creepy upstairs, which was basically just a hallway lined with therapist offices and art studios. And a locked bathroom door, which sucked because I was really afraid Chooch wasn’t going to make it.

And then we reached the point of the day known in some regions as “Erin and Chooch are Hungry and Now Everyone Must Suffer.” Henry frantically tried to find somewhere suitable for us to eat. Just kidding. Henry is never frantic. Always calm and monotone. Except for that time a camel began devouring my hand. For some reason, Henry responded to that in a frantic manner. Maybe because he cares?? No. Probably because he didn’t want his hand jobs to suffer.

Anyway, we ended up a pub called the Witch’s Brew. Of course it was called the Witch’s Brew.

I don’t think our waitress liked us. Either that or she actually was really struggling to understand our WEIRD PENNSYLVANIAN dialect. Each one of us had to repeat ourselves to her twice and, after a simple surveillance of her interacting with other tables, I don’t think she had a hearing problem.

Chooch especially was getting pissed off at her not understanding him. Poor kid was just trying to order chocolate milk and she reacted like he asked to suck it from her teat.

“What??” she asked him in a voice that Alyson would have had a field day with.

I feel the same way, Chooch.

And then Henry confiscated our knives!!

Three hours later than I had planned, we were finally on our way to Boston to spend the day with our friends Matt and Kristen (after Henry literally drive in circles around Salem for a good 30 minutes before getting stuck in some random mid-day traffic). It was about an hour’s drive, and I used it wisely — by convincing Chooch that Matt is a witch.

I’m going to veer off schedule here for a  minute and share the pictures from our tour of the Lizzie Borden house in Fall River, MA. After an entertaining breakfast at AlMac’s Diner where I had Portuguese bolo and will consequently never be satisfied with a regular old English Muffin ever again, we stopped here on our last full day of vacation.

Chooch was pretty fucking stoked to say the least. The kid has grown up in a house where serial killer greeting cards are made, what do you expect?

Henry and I stayed over night here back in 2002, but it was worth the return trip for us, too. Mostly to experience it all over again with Chooch, who knows the legendary story and has watched countless YouTube videos about the house. However, when we walked into the gift shop to pay for a tour, the tour guide behind the register looked a little skeptical at these two assholes toting a 7-year-old child to a murder house.

But then Chooch sprawled out on the couch in the waiting area, mimicking the crime scene photo of dead Andrew Borden, and the tour guide widenened her eyes a bit. “Do you wanna help me out when we get in the house?” At first she suggested that he play the role of Abby Borden, but Chooch quickly said, “No. I want to be the dead dad.”

“How old is he?” one of the three old people in our group asked. I could tell that they too were leery of taking an hour long tour with some brat, but I’d like to think they were pleasantly surprised by the tour’s end.

I mean, come on guys. You know I’m the first person to call my kid out for being a dick. But he was actually super well-behaved and genuinely enrapt in touring the house. I was so proud of my gruesome little brat!

Floral patterns suit him.

The house has changed owners since we were last there. To be honest, I don’t rememeber much of the original tour we got in 2002, other than being a served a plate of cheese and Oreos to snack on while watching some made-for-TV movie about Lizzie Borden, so a lot of what I saw on this day was basically brand new to me. I also feel that the guide we had this time was more knowledgeable.

(Side Note: The guide we had in 2002 was also the summer caretaker and ended up being the only other person sleeping in the house with us that night. He was pretty creepy, but affable at the same time. I posted a picture of him on my blog a few years ago and someone commented, informing me that he had perished in a house fire. So sad! I mentioned this to our tour guide last week—I shamefully can’t remember her name but she was really wonderful—and she said that when the new owners bought the Borden house, they had a really hard time getting him to leave.)

The house was replicated as best as possible, considering they only had black and white photos to go on.

In the dining room, we learned that this is where Abby Borden’s autopsy was done. The guide had pictures of their mutilated bodies and said to me, “It’s up to you if you want your son to see these.”

I asked Chooch if he wanted to see, and he shrugged and said, “Yeah, sure.”

I found out later that I probably should have asked him if he knew what “autopsy” meant first.

While the guide was demonstrating ironing handkerchiefs (one of Lizzie’s alleged alibis), Chooch was chomping at the bit to go into the next room because he recognized the couch immediately. You’d have thought he waited all his life for this one short moment of impersonating some dead dude with a crushed skull and dangling eyeball.

Chooch’s Shining Moment.

The old people on the tour with us laughed uncomfortably during his performance.

We were all clustered in the foyer listening about Andrew Borden’s final moments on Earth; I was standing at the foot of the steps — the top of which was where Abby Borden’s dead body was first spotted prostrate on the other side of the bed in the guest room–with my back to the front door when the mailman began shoving circulars and bills through the mailslot. The new gray hairs I must have amassed in that moment has got to be a staggering number.

Chooch volunteered me to play the butchered Abby Borden, which required me to sprawl ass-up on the floor while Chooch giggled devilishly. Thank god there are no pictures. My ass is much wider than the last time I was photographed in this pose.

This lady knows her shit! We definitely got our money’s worth.

Borden spirits all up in Henry’s shit!

J/K. I was just really bored in the car. Best use of a bokeh app!

In the corner of the guest room, the actual dress Elizabeth Montgomery wore in the final scene of the Lizzie Borden movie in the 80s is on display. When the guide mentioned Elizabeth’s name, Chooch put his hand up to his mouth and whispered, “Witch!” to me, giving me this faux-serious look. At first I couldn’t figure out why he said that, but then I remembered that the day before, we took him to the Salem Witch Museum and there was a wall of photos of famous witches throughout history, and of course “Bewitched” was one of them.

The guide we had that day pointed out each picture and gave a brief explanation, and I guess that little jerk was actually paying attention (because I know I barely was).  Yay for money not wasted for once!

Actual books that belonged to Lizzie. Check out “With Edged Tools.” LOL right!?

Chooch was really into all the vintage cat figures he spotted throughout the house, and also the creepy trunk of toys that the owner keeps in one of the attic bedroom that is supposedly haunted by random children. Chooch said that’s the room he wants to sleep in when we go back and I was like, “That’s cool, bro. But have fun staying up there by yourself.”

Haunted or not, there is something to be said about standing in a house where one of the most sensationalized double-murders in this country’s history were carried out.  I was definitely on edge the entire time while Henry just looked bored (or probably confused because the only way he understands anything is if the cast of Criminal Minds is acting it out on TV for him). Chooch would get fidgety here and there, but thankfully he didn’t do anything overtly dickish to draw attention to himself. For the most part, he honestly seemed like he was interested in what the tour guide was saying, officially making “7” my favorite Chooch age thus far.

When I went back to the gift shop afterward to buy souvenirs, the guide admitted to me that she was a little worried when she saw us walk in with Chooch, and how pleasantly surprised she was at how he conducted himself. I’m so glad she told me that, because as a parent, I’m sure there are times when I think my kid is acting normal but everyone else is thinking, “TAKE THAT BASTARD BACK TO THE ZOO, MY GOD!” My fear is that we’re going to take him somewhere like this and he’s going to break something or cause a general scene by throwing a tantrum out of boredom.

I remember the time when I was a kid, just a little bit older than him, on vacation with my grandparents in Europe. I think we had stopped in Assisi, Italy and, right befor walking into a shop filled to the brim with breakables, my grandma gripped me by the upper arm and hissed, “DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING!”

Aaaaand guess who knocked over an entire display of glass figurines with her purse? GOOD OLD GRANDMA JEAN.

Meanwhile, as the guide was praising my kid’s good behavior, Chooch was in the process of pissing on his shorts in the customer rest room. So, you win some, you lose some.

Can’t leave Fall River without paying our respects at the cemetery!

Stoked for Lizzie!

I really was pleased with how we were able to sneak in educational bullshit on our vacation without it feeling like 5 days of war memorials and dry history lectures. I can’t wait for Chooch to go back to second grade and tell everyone about the shit he did, haha.

I had been studying Canobie Lake Park in the weeks prior to our trip. Already, I liked that it had rides that I hadn’t seen anywhere else, rides that are probably popular in gypsy-run carnivals in Eastern Europe that are probably not inspected but definitely have the best motherfucking pierogies you’re ever going to find this side of Hunky poker night in Pittsburgh. And it has three coasters and a darkride! Something for everyone and everything for me.

Canobie has the motherlode of spinny rides, the kinds with the brightly-colored flashing lights and German techno music and random murals of Marilyn Monroe standing on a beach. Alyson kept saying things like, “YES! LET’S RIDE THIS CENTRIFUGAL FORCE TORTURE DEVICE AND BARF ALL OVER OURSELVES!” to which I would cheer while silently hoping that no one actually barfed because HAVEN’T YOU SEEN PROBLEM CHILD!?

The Extreme Frisbee, are you fucking kidding me. When I first saw it, I gave it a million middle fingers with my eyes alone. Something has happened to me along the way where I’m less afraid of puking and more afraid of OMG THAT FUCKER GOES HIGH AS SHIT!! This is why I have refused to ride the SwingShot since my inaugural boarding in 2007, where I honestly though my bowels were going to liquify and seep out of my mouth. But this past trip to Kennywood, I had a change of heart, and ended up riding it THREE TIMES. And I LOVED it. I kept saying things like, “Why was I so afraid of it then?” and “I want to get married on this ride” and “TAKE ME TO PROM, SWINGSHOT! I’ll pretend to be a virgin!”

I applied this revelation to the case of Erin v. The Extreme Frisbee and asked Alyson if she’d ride it. (Chooch was so angry that he wasn’t tall enough, so he and Henry did lame stuff in the meantime.)

“Ohhh, this looks REAL barfy,” she said solemnly, and then headed straight for the entrance.

Alyson ain’t scared of shit, you guys. She is the model riding partner!

In line, I tried to distract myself by talking about Serious Things, like being stalked by CYS-reporting religious nuts and getting Single White Femaled once again, this time by a Married White Female. But soon it was our turn and I honestly almost ran of the ride. Especially when we were the last two to board and found that we weren’t even going to sit next to each other. I didn’t want to die alone!

But the nice ride assistant (they are so nice and super enthusiastic at Canobie, often times making all of the riders scream and cheer before sending them off to their uncertain death) made everyone next to me move down so that Alyson could take the seat next to me. What a gentleman. And then, in effort to mask my fear with humor, I pointed out that the ride was made in Germany.

Of course.

Germany! You motherfucker!

I actually am a 3 ring circus — how did they know!?

And then I just remember sheer terror, roaring gears, and SCREAMING. The kind of screaming that is usually followed shortly by a chainsaw in Texas.

Alyson laughed her ass off through the entire ride. I’m sitting next to her, eyelids clenched, fingers gripping the safety bar and chanting, “WHY WHY WHY WHY OMG OMH WHY WE’RE ALL GONNA DIEEEE” over and over while she’s laughing like she’s being tickled. And that made me laugh too.

But only for a second! Then it was back to motherfucking Germans and their sadistic carnival engineers.

SURPRISE! We didn’t die. And for some fucked up reason, about an hour later I admitted that I wanted to ride it again. And we did too, shortly before the park closed. And it was even scarier / more fun at night. THERE, I SAID IT. I like the stupid Frisbee.

I have found, though, that the secret to success of being a grown-up in an amusement park full of racing-light temptations is MODERATION. Ride a goddamn spinny ride, take a stroll, eat a fucking foodstuff. Then ride some more. And keep doing that.

This does not work for Henry or dummies. Sorry, suckers. Get a better sense of balance or something.

It’s tough when you’re at a place like this with a child though, because it seems that their least favorite things in the world are “taking a stroll and eating fucking foodstuff.” They want to have their brains scrambled and then get back in line to do it again.

Chooch was an impatient jerk when, after riding the Yankee Cannonball (a wooden coaster that may have truncated my spinal column a little bit but Alyson didn’t hear the sickening crack over top of her hysterical laughter), I vetoed his urgent pleas for moremoremore in favor of using the masticated dough of a personal pan pizza to weigh down my stomach lining like absorbant paperweights. A few days later, Chooch was looking at the map of Canobie we brought with us as a souvenir and said something about the Zero Gravity ride that he didn’t ride because of me.

“I didn’t even know they had one of those there!” I cried, because I totally would have rode it with him.

“Yeah, I asked you if you wanted to ride it but you said—” (and here he hires a nasal, whiny tone to mimic me) “—‘Not right now! I need to eat something and then ride something calm!'” And he also scrunched up his arms like a T-Rex and fluttered his fingers, because this is his Erin impression which is awesome to know.

At least he got to ride some spinny/bouncy ride by himself while the grown-ups were eating, god forbid.

Speaking of grand impersonators, a pseudo Justin Bieber took the stage next to us and treated us to a thrilling display of lip-synching and Martha’s Jazz Barn choreography. Alyson mentioned that she didn’t even know any Bieber songs, WELL NOW SHE DOES! And hopefully the next billion times she hears one in a grocery store, she will think of me!

Later, we were in line for another spinny ride called the Skater and were thoroughly entertained by this beefy sports fan who rejoiced in cries of “AWESOME!” and “YEAAAAH!” kind of like Lil Jon, which made Alyson and me crack up because he just did not seem like the kind of guy who would be so joyous on an oversized skateboard spinning up and down a ramp. But he was REALLY FUCKING FEELING IT and I looked over at Henry, who was standing off to the side of the Skater, eating a blue Italian ice, and thought, “Why can’t that asshole enjoy these rides too!?” Maybe if there was a SERVICE-themed amusement park.

When it was our turn, I wound up sitting next to a friendly but boundary-crossing guy and who was pretty much using the entire left side of my body as his afternoon nap apparatus. Dude was fucking heavy! Meanwhile, Alyson was teaching Chooch to hold up his hands, metal-style, and scream “Slayerrrrr!”

When we got off the ride, I started cracking up all over again because Skater’s #1 Fan & Afternoon Nap Guy belonged to each other!

(l to r) Skater’s #1 Fan & Afternoon Nap Guy.

SLAYERRRR!

****

I’m trying to keep this as condensed as possible, but the fact is, we never get to hang out with Alyson and I want to remember every thing that happened! I don’t want this to be all tl;dr (that means “too long; didn’t read,” BARB!) so I’m splitting it up into several parts. Sue me!

Knoebels is an antiquated, beautiful park — the woodsy, old-fashioned kind that are few and far between anymore.  I’ve mentioned this before on the blog, but I really do prefer small, family-oriented parks like this one because that is where you get the weird, old rides. Don’t get me wrong, I heart roller coasters just as much as the next adrenaline junkie, but there is something to be said for entering some creepy funhouse that smells like old All In the Family episodes and moth balls.

I’m not a big fan of riding ferris wheels, but Knoebels had one of the prettiest ferris wheels I’ve ever seen. I think I must have taken a picture of it every single time I passed it—it was the mechanical embodiment of childhood summers.

But again, I did not ride the ferris wheel because I was too busy riding things that were flinging me about like a rag doll. Whiplash never felt so good.

SPOILER ALERT: My stomachache went away after Henry fed me. (And no, he didn’t feed me Rohypnol. This day, anyway.) But first I had to suffer on a bench, alone, while Chooch and Katelyn “panned for gemstones” under the guidance of an old man who really took his position outside of the Mine Museum seriously. (I’m not being sarcastic.) While I was on the bench, I had the opportunity to internally mock a family who tried to ride the Black Diamond only to be rejected because they didn’t have tickets.

Speaking of the Black Diamond — sick ride, bro! It was a dark ride, one of the reasons we were there that day, and it took us on a relatively macabre tour of a mining catastrophe. It even started off with some miner forcefully yanking on his mule’s* rope, which really upset Chooch, so good job Black Diamond! Your work here is done!

*(I knew this was a mule and not a donkey because the Mine Museum taught me so much, you guys!)

There was one especially chilling part of the ride where we passed a mural of skeletal angels lifting away dead miners. (Props to Kari for the heads up on that one!) This was Chooch’s favorite of the two dark rides because it had a couple dips, giving it a mild coaster feel.

Me? I prefered the Haunted Mansion. It was everything a dark ride should be: pretzel car bursting through the entrance door and the momentary panic when your eyes don’t adjust to the sudden darkness,  the sound of gears and chains as your car is propelled around corners, the heart-stopping sensation of having a car horn honked at death metal decibels right up in your grill, the parts that make you laugh (one of the dead props had hideously-sagging boobs, which Henry was obessed with), and the parts that make you wish you were riding with someone you could make out with, or worse. (Read: Jonny Craig. I wonder if his ginger hair glows in the dark?)

Included in our registration fee was an authentic Knoebels late lunch! The  thick slabs of glazed ham and fried chicken, which—and I’m going to Vegetarian Times Hell for saying this—actually looked so super good but I still haven’t completely rejected my anti-meat stance yet. Instead, I allowed a Knoebels worker to ladle some scalloped potatoes and cole slaw onto my bare compartmentalized picnic plate. And it was really good. This is where I learned that I really enjoy white birch beer. I mean, I REALLY ENJOY IT, Dottie.

Then we got to eat birthday cake for the Haunted Mansion’s 40th birthday!

On a sad and serious note, one of the DAFE members had recently passed away. Her name is Tanya and she was supposed to have been there with us that weekend. Being a DAFE n00b, I had never met Tanya, but during our meal, someone stood up and gave somewhat of an eulogy for her, and I can tell you that she sounded like someone I wish I had known: had a love of amusement parks and haunted houses and ran like Hell from chainsaw guys. She must have been so much fun! And it was clear that she was incredibly loved and highly regarded. I can only hope people care half as much when I die. I mean, I had never met her and I was totally welling up!

Afterward, a raffle was going to happen, but Chooch and I were like, “WE CANNOT SIT HERE ANY LONGER. WE WANT TO RIDE THINGS OMG!!” Henry is REALLY into raffles and tried his best to discourage a revolt, but we weren’t playing around. From where I sat beneath Pavilion L, I could see approximately 4.5 rides that I wanted to strap my ass into post haste, and I wasn’t waiting around to hear a bunch of numbers.

Especially since Henry refused to bid on any of the bumper cars being auctioned off. Dickbag.

Chris offered to listen for our registration numbers to be called, so I was like, “GREAT THANKS!!!” and hoped that he heard that over the sound of my feet hitting the pavement. Chris? Bless your number-listening heart. Meanwhile, Henry looked completely defeated, but followed us anyway.

Because really — Chooch and me alone in an amusement park? Not the best idea.

Knoebels has a flying carpet ride, which Chooch and I rode twice in a row. Henry shook his head when he saw that in lieu of rejoining him after the first go-around, we ran straight back into line to ride again. He obviously knows not the gaping orifice left in my heart after Kennywood shipped off their own flying carpet ride, else he’d have understood my urgent need to clean to that swooshing motion a little longer.

That ride is my jam, y’all.

Like so many other parks, Knoebels has their own variation of the log flume called Skloosh, which I actually did not know the name of until just now. I had just been calling it “that log flume thing” this whole time. Anyway, prior to our DAFE meal, Henry had already filled his quota of rides (two wooden coasters and two dark rides — I imagine his hemrrhoids must have been straight up picketing) so he skulked around with my large iCarly messenger bag, pretending to have friends to text, while Chooch and I waited in line in front of a small gaggle of super boisterous middle school boys.

One of them said “shit,” resulting in their Eddie Haskell-esque ring leader to lean toward me and apologize on his friend’s behalf.  I was like, “Oh bitch please, if you only knew the cussing dregs that pour out of this kid’s mouth,” jutting an elbow toward Chooch.

Seriously, that kid’s first word was “asshole.” He calls Bill a “douche cup.” Hearing the word “shit” isn’t going to drastically alter his already-snide demeanor.

Knoebels has one of the last remaining Fascination parlors left in the US. I learned this today by accident when I was Wiki’ing something else. (It’s really none of your business.) Anyway, I wanted to check it out because my friend Kate was telling me about her local amusement park in New York called Sylvan Beach and how she likes to play Fascination and I knew immediately that I needed to see this for myself because one of my favorite Cure songs is “Fascination Street” and what kind of poser fan would I be if I didn’t at least stick one foot inside a Fascination parlor.

So, it’s like a Skee Ball and Bingo amalgamation, right? Totally old fashioned and wood-paneled. Among the strange flea market assortment of prizes were crock pots and LAMPS, you guys. LAMPS. It was a nice change of pace from Bieber posters and stuffed Rastafarian bananas.

And you just put a quarter down and some chick comes around and collects it and then that’s it — you’re playing Fascination.

Henry and Chooch really sucked at it, though. I was really hoping one of them would win me that bantam green chair (pictured above) for my imaginary friend that just happens to double as a dwarf lifeguard.

Man, I bet Henry’s mom was the shit at Fascination back in the day. I’m going to ask her. Anytime I ask her things, she gets paranoid that I’m asking her things.

Chooch made me take this.

After the park closed, the rest of us laminate-wearing DAFE members got to stay for an addition 90 minutes of exclusive ride time on the two dark rides, free of charge. Yay, my favorite part! Flaunting my laminate!

Our group met in front of the Haunted Mansion, where a moment of silence for Tanya was held as the first car was sent in alone, carrying a bouquet of flowers. This beautifully bittersweet moment of silence as we all watched the floral representation of Tanya take the inaugural trip through the Haunted Mansion’s doors…

…when Chooch the Mouth asked in an inappropriately-decibeled voice: “What, did she like, die in the Haunted Mansion?”

Several people near us bristled uncomfortably.

“I don’t know,” I hissed, making throat-slashing motions which is Mom Sign Language for You Best STFU, Boy!

“Then how did she die!?” he pressed on.

It was everything I could do not to stuff the nearest caramel apple pork chop into his yammering maw.

Thankfully, I think the people around us understood that he is just a small kid with legitimate questions and meant no disrespect.

Still, it was pretty embarrassing. Meet your newest members, DAFE!

Before getting into line, we all hunkered down for a group photo which was cool because group photos make me feel like I’m part of something (paying for membership cards accomplishes that, too) and also because there were enough people huddled together that I have hopes the photo will be far enough away that the casual observer won’t notice my cake-rolls.

Afterward, I thought for sure we would all be in full-blown Sweep the Leg, Jonny-mode, clotheslining each other on our wild sprint to get into line. But everyone just walked calmly to the entrance and lined up without acting like the wolves I was raised by.

I was one of the first people in line because I am naturally in a hurry for everything. If I tripped you on my way there, sorry I’m not sorry.

You know what the worst is, when you’re with a bunch of people and they are walking so goddamn slow toward a ride at an amusement park and you see this huge group of d-bags coming from another direction and they swoop into line right before you because SOME PEOPLE don’t know the proper times to be in a fucking hurry!

Don’t be one of those people.

I think the reason I feel such a strong pull to darkrides is because most of them embody that flamboyant Hee Haw-esque psychedelic kitsch of the 1960s & 1970s and you never know what day-glo monster is going to laugh mockingly at you when your Pretzel-car bursts through those black doors. Kennywood had a ride called Le Cachot (lovingly known as Lick a Shit) which burnt down in 1998 and I promise you that part of my heart was singed along with it. Kennywood has never been the same since – the remaining old darkrides have been given modern makeovers, which basically means they’ve been raped of their magic.

Their beloved skeleton-haunted Old Mill was given a Garfield makeover, for Christ’s sake.

However, I’m sure 25 years from now, when the current darkrides have been replaced with CGI zombies and To Catch a Predator vignettes, my pruned-self will be pining for the days when we got to shoot at mechanical ghosts for points.

90 minutes of back-and-forth running between the Haunted Mansion and Black Diamond — it was this girl’s dream come true. And we were treated on a lights-on excursion through the Haunted Mansion, where Henry got to see his favorite pair of floppy monster boobs in better lighting.

(We almost got to ride through the Black Diamond with the lights on but then some ride engineer person caught wind of it and came over to tell the ride operator to turn the lights back off. Henry was super bothered by this which worried absolutely no one because what’s Henry going to do? Bristle his moustache, that’s all.)

This is the censored version. We all know what was really happening.

Knoebels is a super charming park, the kind you’d want to lose your virginity in (they even let you bring dogs! Not that I’m suggesting anything by mentioning that in the sentence as losing your virginity), and I can’t wait to go back!

When I was 13, I loved amusement parks and listening to the same songs over and over. (My top 2 burnt-out songs of that age were “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men and “Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover” by Sophie B. Hawkins—the b-side of that song was dope, ya’ll. Just ask my friends Kim and Liz, who were subjected to it the whole weekend we spent at Lake Chautauqua that summer.)

Twenty years later, the only real difference is that I don’t have braces anymore. And if I really felt so inclined as to dildo my ego, I might even say that my hair is way more fabulous now. (Hi, I had a perm then.) But other than that, there I was in the car last Saturday morning, listening to the same 5 albums, rinse and repeat, for 4 hours on the way to Knoebel’s Amusement Park in Elysburg, PA.

“Uh….this CD is back to the beginning. Can we change it now?” Henry would ask futilely as the instrumental intro to Dance Gavin Dance’s Downtown Battle Mountain replayed. (Yes, I still buy CDs.) I’d answer that question by looking out the passenger window and smirking. God, it’s good to be childish.

I mean, child-like.

 We arrived at the park 30 minutes before registration time, but luckily Knoebels is a free admission park, so we parked and did a preliminary walk-around. I needed to get a lay of the land and to scope out all of the rides, as if I hadn’t creeped on their website 87 times in the weeks prior.

I take amusement parks very seriously. If a park is particularly crowded and Chooch wants to stand in line with 60 screaming assholes to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl, I will calmly* count off on my fingers all of the other parks and fairs where he will be able to ride the ubiquitous Tilt-a-Whirl, at which point I will drag him over to a ride that we wouldn’t normally have access to at home in Pittsburgh, like the Looper or the Cosmotron (like an indoors Music Express — Metallica was playing when we rode it). Someday, Chooch will understand this and his future children will be better because of it.

*(I mean…..)

The concept of an amusement park with free admission is just so precious to me. I remember when I was a kid, our local Kennywood Park was like that — you could just strap on your fanny pack and walk around if you were an old person or perhaps someone allergic to standing in lines, and not worry about it costing you $35+.  And maybe later on if you wanted to just ride the bumper cars because  maybe you’re 9 months pregnant and trying to put yourself into labor, then you could just buy tickets for that ride and call it an abortion day.

Knoebels is still like that! You can either get the ride-all-day wristband, buy individual ride tickets, or not do either of those things and just eat yourself to death on caramel apple pork chops. KNOEBELS ISN’T GOING TO JUDGE YOU.

PETA probably will, though. Right after they make stickers with your caramel apple pork chop-stuffed face on it. I’m sure I’ll be signing some petition about it at Warped Tour this year, too.

Finally, it was 11am and we got to meet up with our peeps at the pavilion. The Handas were already there, so Chooch and their daughter Katelyn did their weird elementary school flirting routine (which is obviously still the same flirt set I belong to). Those two never stopped bickering like an old married couple for the rest of the day: Insult! Assault! Compete! Repeat! 

A little 411 about DAFE (appropriately pronounced “daffy”): Back in November, I enrolled the three of us in the Darkride and Funhouse Enthusiast club because I was always checking out their website for trip ideas anyway, and then once I became friends with the Castle Blood family, I learned that they have an affiliation with that group as well. That was all the arm-twisting I needed.  One of the coolest perks of being a card-carrying DAFE member (aside from bragging about it, of course), is that there are kinds of fun group events to attend at various amusement parks and we get exclusive ride time on the dark rides. In November, we got preferential treatment during Kennywood’s Holiday Lights event — a lights-on walk through of their dark ride Ghostwood Estate while the everyday commoners were still waiting to get into the park.

Shit, you know I rode that high horse the whole way home.

However, my work friends think that this is one of the most ridiculous things ever as far as my ridiculous life goes and have been making fun of me mercilessly. To that I say: u mad, work-bros?

I was so excited to get my own laminate that I didn’t even question the fact that “fourty” is spelled wrong. I LOVE LAMINATES. All day long, I was thinking, “Yeah, I see you looking at my laminate” to all of the non-laminated people in line. Somehow, Henry became part of the registration crew and sat at a picnic table, stringing together laminates. He is always identified as “blue collar volunteer” no matter where we go and always ends up helping people.

We are so fucking different.

I’m going to get him a bunch of “CREW” t-shirts for his birthday.  I’m sure they’d be applicable every time he wears them.

After we were registered, we still had to get our hands stamped and wrists braceleted, which required us to stand in line with COMMONFOLK for an extended period of time because the park was just about to open for real and everyone decided to get there at the same time. That gave me time to scope out the non-DAFE crowd.

“I’m looking for my kind,” I explained to Henry, who knew immediately that I was looking for scene kids.

“Good luck,” he said dryly.

I thought I saw a guy later on in the day that I could possibly have an ill-conceived crush on, but the closer I got to him, the more I realized he was half past Bring Me the Horizon, more toward Blood on the Dance Floor.

That and also the fact that he was probably only 15.

And had pretty bad skin.

And wasn’t Jonny Craig.

With our special DAFE vouchers, we each got a ticket for the two dark rides—Black Diamond and the Haunted Mansion—which are an additional fee on top of the ride all day price for all the peasants.

Meanwhile, my stomach had REALLY STARTED TO HURT. I’m not sure what the fuck was wrong, probably Henry’s terrible driving and the shitty Sheetz breakfast sandwich that was revolting inside my new Weight Watchers-shrunk stomach. But it was so bad that I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to ride anything. CAN YOU FUCKING IMAGINE!?

I’m going to end Part 1 with this awesome photo that I took inside the free Knoebels Museum:

In our travels from Lancaster back home to Pittsburgh, we stopped at the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, PA. The road wound us all over a rural expanse of undeveloped land. No houses. No businesses. Barely any other cars. Just the three of us, driving closer and closer to a site of tragedy and gloom.

Once we parked, we had to walk a bit to the actual memorial. Only family members are permitted to visit the actual crash site, which is presently marked with a small boulder and a flag. Apparently, there is a monument in development.

Objects of rememberance were scattered across the wall leading up to the memorial. I’m not going to lie — it was hard to even breathe while we were there. It was scary being so close to where such a huge piece of our tragic history was scripted, but mostly just overwhelmingly sad.

At the end of the path, there are tall marble markers etched with the names of the crew and passengers, angled toward the direction in which the plane was crashing.

After visiting Shanksville, I can’t even begin to imagine what the Ground Zero Memorial would do to me.

Shippensburg, PA would have absolutely no value to me if not for Ed Helms and his impeccably-constructed Tiny World, a small village in his yard built for his cats.  Henry seemed pretty ambivalent about this stop on my agenda, and I think he was going to try and dispute it so I made sure to loudly announce, “But it’s a town built for CATS!” which made Chooch’s interest pique real quick, and soon Henry had two children whining and begging to visit Tiny World. Henry glared at me for using the c-word. “Cat” is like the equivalent to smelling salt for Chooch. He can be in the deepest zone, a self-induced pouting coma, but someone casually says the c-word and he’s very much in the present, yelling, “WHERE? WHERE? WHERE IS  THE CAT!?”

Sometimes I don’t even know why Henry bothers to object. His voice of dissent falls on pretend-deaf ears every time.

As Henry wound the car over country roads, he asked, “Um, this isn’t at someone’s house, is it?” I answered him by looking out the window and ignoring him.

Parts of Tiny World can be seen from the road, so I screamed for Henry to pull over the first second I glimpsed a hillside dotted with a doll-sized community. We parked in a small, makeshift gravel lot next to several other cars. At first it seemed like Tiny World was going to be booming with tourists, but we were the only oglers the whole time, so I guess the cars belonged to the family.

I don’t know what I was expecting, just some plywood shells I suppose, but Ed’s attention to detail was impeccable. I read online that he had no formal training in this stuff, just sat down and did it for no reason other than because he wanted to. And you know what, that’s inspiring even to someone like me. If I want to be a brain surgeon, I should just sit down and do it! And boy, have I got just the person to be my guinea pig.

The town was a tiny bit weathered, some of the furnishings had toppled over and cobwebs abound, but it was still pretty surprising that it wasn’t in a greater state of disarray. The proprietor is apparently pretty old and was suffering some health problems according to a Roadside America update from 2011, so it’s hard to say if upkeep is being honored at all.

The attic of one of the larger plantation-esque homes had items all strewn about and I wondered if it was intentionally done to make it look haunted. In either case, I legitimately shivered and stepped away from the window before I wound up accidently staring into the eyes of Bagul.

Dead rooster in the barn’s hay loft.

To be honest, I kind of liked that it had an abandoned tone to it. It made me feel like we were being watched from the nearby woods, hackneyed hillbillies lining us up in the crosshairs of their laser guns, preparing to shrink us down into Tiny World citizens. I already knew which house I was going to move into. (The one with the haunted attic, duh.)

If you like trains, then one might imagine you would enjoy the Tiny World Train Station.

That wallpaper! And look at that tiny box of thread on the sewing machine – even if you’re some joyless cat-hating asshole who thinks that building a sprawling town for feral cats is a waste of time, you still have to give respect to the details that went into this project — it’s a true labor of love.

There was even a relatively hot picture of Jesus Christ on the wall of the church.

Chooch’s succinct review, typed on his own: “It’s cool!  it’s kitty awesome! it’s  really freakin cool as shit.”

Again, the reviews I read online weren’t exactly current, but Tiny World is supposedly a hot commodity for all of the neighbors during the Christmas season. We noticed quite a bit of leftover Christmas lights and decorations peeking out here and there, so God only knows the last time the holiday lights set-up was functioning.

Built into the entrance/exit trellis is a pot for donations which I insisted on contributing. This seemed to prickle Papa Tight Wad’s asshole, but he finally handed Chooch a dollar for the pot.

“I WANT TO PUT MONEY IN TOO!” I cried. “IT WAS MY IDEA TO COME HERE!!!”

Henry sighed wearily and slapped another buck in my opened, whiny palm, which I then happily dropped into the collection hole.

“I’m so glad we came out here! It was totally worth it!” I gushed while Henry tried to find his way back to the highway and a gas station before Chooch pissed his pants. “Wasn’t it awesome?!” I cried, shaking Henry’s arm.

He didn’t answer, just continued to drive while looking like the personification of FML.

Henry, actually SMILING was washing the car windows! It’s a road trip miracle!

We also visited the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, but I don’t feel that it’s appropriate or respectful to include that in this post.

To lighten the mood, we stopped in Bedford for a photo op with a large Coffee Pot, which used to be a lunch stand way back in the day. Like all awesomely tacky roadside attractions, it was in threat of being demolished in the 90s, but was eventually restored and is now used as a landmark.

THANK GOD!

“No, that’s OK,” Henry mumbled when I asked him if he was going to get out of the car and gawk at it with me and Chooch.

After Chooch accidentally knocked off part of the coffee pot (in his defense, that pot has structural leprosy), we both turned into royal motherfuckers. Henry of course knew this was because we were hungry and FINALLY stopped at a Valley Dairy to feed us.

“Hey Mommy, knock knock,” Chooch said after our food was served and we began to return to our non-surly, hyper selves.

“Who’s there?” I begrudgingly went along. His knock knock jokes are the worst.

“Room service!” And then we both laughed our food all over the table while Henry simply frowned at the memory of his stressful experience the night before at the hotel.

“What are you looking at?” Chooch asked me as I stared off into the distance while slowly eating a scoop of maple pecan ice cream. (Hello Weight Watcher narcs, I was on “vacation.”)

“Nothing, I’m just thinking,” I answered.

“Oh,” Chooch shrugged. “I always figured that when you do stuff like that, you’re wondering why Daddy won’t marry you.”

HOW ASTUTE.

—————

That night, after we had been home for a few hours, Chooch sighed, “I miss yesterday.”

“What part do you miss?” I asked.

“Uh, Pierce the Veil,”  he answered in that awesomely snotty teenaged tone.

Me too, Chooch. Me too.

So much love for that entire weekend!