After being stuck in that hallway for an hour and breathing in the subtle aroma of Clearasil (I think I witnessed some of those kids reaching puberty, even), they finally opened the door to all of us non-skaters. We had our hands stamped and claimed our spot by the stage. Naturally, Pink Sleeves and Pot Belly in Stripes (the adolescent bimbos who never stopped flitting back and forth on the heels of the roadies) beat us there.

Waiting for Emarosa to come on, I killed time by analyzing the scene kids before me, wondering which of them were in it for the music, and which were just pretentious retards who have to rip off other people’s styles to look cool.  Christina and I deduced that probably it was mainly just the boys who were real underneath the assymetric coifs and skinny jeans. Don’t get me wrong! I love me some scene kids at the post hardcore show, but some of them are just ridiculous. (And I know, it’s like that no matter what the scene is. Posers never die out.) And then I make the mistake of getting close enough to hear their oral banality and I’m reminded that at the core, most of these kids are just obnoxious teenagers. It’s going to be hard weeding through the fake ones to find the good ones, like Blake, if I ever get off my ass and put that book together.

The cool thing about this venue was that, if I got bored with kid-watching, I could pivot to the left and take in some skateboarders on the ramps. There was this one guy, he looked older than the rest (like, he could have been TWENTY, OMG), who was riding his bike on the ramps. In true asshole fashion, I cried out “OH MY GOD BE CAREFUL!” in mock-concern. I guess he took that as the mating call of a new fan, because when he reached the top of the ramp closest to me, he got off his bike and rested there, smiling goofily at me. Stewing in discomfort, I quickly slid behind the pillar I was leaning against. But every time I peeked around, he went back to grinning at me. Christina thought this was hilarious and was practically passing out wedding invitations.

But then I became distracted by this bitch who was totally stealing my gimmick of being the plain, older girl at the show. I glared at the back of her ugly head and shouted to Christina, “This broad’s usurping my demographic and I hate her!” She stood so close in front of me that I could smell the product wafting from her too-shiny black hair, which was unacceptable considering the show hadn’t yet started and there was around, oh I don’t know, 678765 cubic feet of empty space around the stage.

In the middle of thinking thoughts generally reserved for the minds of the criminally insane, Emarosa took the stage and I went from being a homicidal head case to a teary-eyed girl with a melting heart.

Jonny, I love you long time.

Many times I have attempted to explain how I feel at these shows, and I know fail miserably. It’s like when you get a tooth ache and you swish with scalding hot tea, letting it seep into the nerve pocket. That’s how it is for me at these shows — I derive some sort of sick pleasure from the pain I feel in my heart. It’s like passionate torture and part of me wants to run out the door but the other part is like, “No, this feels good. Let’s break out the nail-studded dildo now.”

I didn’t pay  much attention to the people around me during Emarosa’s set, but there was one incident involving a scene kid who, when you factored in the height of his Robert Smith back-combed hair-scraper, towered at least six feet and planted himself right in front of me. Then his puny little girlfriend joined him and they dove into an impromptu reunion-slash-lovefest of sorts with the kids next to them. There was a lot of hugging and before I knew it, I lost track of whose jelly-braceleted wrist belonged to whom.

There’s good old Pink Sleeves, probably devising a plan to get on the band’s RV and dole out statutory blow jobs.

While Jonny sang, I forgot about the cocksucker who wrecked his Hummer, leaving me with wet bangs. I forgot about Christina directing me to the wrong Holiday Inn because she’s an idiot who couldn’t remember where she made reservations. I forgot about the fight I had with my mom. I forgot about making a grooming appointment for my cat Marcy. All the shittiness got pushed aside and I was able to just relax and breathe for a little while. I never realize just how much stress is building up in my muscles until I go to show and the thundering bass releases it all from my body. Thank you, thundering bass. Mama’s neck was so TIGHT. (I can’t stop calling myself Mama lately and it’s freaking me out.)

Since Emarosa was the opening band, their set was very short. I caught myself putting my hands to my heart a few times though so it was probably best that they left the stage when they did, before I ended up on the floor in a piteous puddle. I knew seeing them live was going to fuck with my emotions. Just listening to them in the car has forced me to pull over and bury my face in my hands on occasion – I WON’T LIE. Thankfully, they didn’t perform any of the songs that leave me vulnerable to a razor’s edge.  I know, it sounds lame, but aside from my kid, this is all I got.

(Part three: Making underage friends with near-Canadian accents, meeting Jonny against my will, and what hair looks like after a chick fight.)

By the time I packed my overnight bag IN THE DARK (dude, it was overcast that day), my street had turned into a hotbed of activity. Cops had both ends blocked off, and when I was forced to drive up on a curb to leave THE STREET ON WHICH I LIVE, the cop who was blocking that end turned and gave me a “What do you think you’re doing?” look so I yelled, “What are you looking at, retard??” which made Christina cower.

Ten minutes later, I realized, “Oh fucking goody, I forgot my wallet at home. I can’t wait to go back to my street. Maybe fucking Fox News will be there by now!” Since I couldn’t get past the roadblock, I made Christina jump out and run down the block (to clarify, I told her to run, but she only power-walked), where Henry met her at the front door with my wallet and, according to Christina, a smug look that read, “She’s all yours!”

I calmed down after being on the road for an hour. And it’s really remarkable that I was able to maintain that calm, considering that Christina is like a talking doll full of stupid remarks and obvious statements. But somehow, after not having money for the toll booth man and me flipping out because I saw mountains that looked like looming ocean waves, we made it to the Holiday Inn on Genessee Street. Thanks to my speedy driving, we had plenty of time before the show to eat greasy food at Max’s Overpriced Grill and run amok through the stinky halls of Holiday Inn like children who were getting to stay at a hotel for the first time ever because Mommy needs to be three states away before Daddy gets home from work.

The Mountain Dew Dilemma

For whatever backwoods reason, we arrived at the venue (a fucking SKATE PARK, hello adolescence) an hour before the show started and attempted to conform to our surroundings. The odds of us blending in are relatively slim, considering we probably had about 13 years on most of the kids in line, and no braces. I was hoping to just stand there, quietly hate on others (there were these two frumpy groupie-types who really needed a lesson from my hand), and avoid any type of conflict that could potentially draw attention to us.

Then I remembered that Christina was with me and she was born with this grating inability to just…BE. However, she was kind of being subdued, aside from blantantly photographing the kids in line with us, and forcing photo ops where I look like I’m giving birth to a porcupine.

And then the Mountain Dew can happened.

Some kid had inadvertently tossed his empty can of Mountain Dew as he walked past us. The can rolled to a stop near my feet. Christina picked the can up and set it upright in the exact place the can had landed. When I asked her what the point of that was, she replied with a shrug that she didn’t want people to think I had littered. “So, by setting the can upright, that reclassifies it as non-waste?” I asked. Considering this, she picked the can up, then proceeded to stand in the middle of the walkway, holding this piece of hot refuse, and looking like a soccer mom caught with dripping anal beads. Seconds ticked away and she continued to just stand there, frozen, looking left to right and holding this can like it’s an HIV-positive knife from a crime scene. People were watching by now, thanks to Christina’s over-exaggerated way of life; I could feel their eyes on us as they waited to see how this was going to play out. “Just put it over there,” I hissed, pointing to a corner. She then made a big production of setting the can down and walked away with her eyes darting all around. I half expected her to shove her hands in her pockets and whistle cartoon music notes.

Next – PART II: Managing to not commit suicide during Emarosa’s too-short set, making underage friends, and quite possibly the most mentally disturbing moment of my life.

Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 13:50 Me: “chooch don’t you think mommy and daddy should get married?” Chooch: “asshole!” #
• 15:12 Just woke up chooch in the backseat so he could see his first rainbow. His response? A grumpy “you asshole.” #
• 20:18 HI JANNA AND I R AT BDAY PARTY EATIN FOOD DRINKIN WINEEEE #
• 20:33 Some guy just walked around introducing himself. Janna asked “did he just bless us?” Um no. He told us his name. #
• 20:50 There is a woman at this party getting pleasured by a snake. #
• 21:43 Janna hit me!!! #
• 22:16 I pee fast. Like a doood. #
• 22:28 I love u when I’m drunk. #
• 22:36 There needs to be some cheese cubes going on in this bitch. Yo. Sup. #
• 23:03 Apparently, she’s in my tit. #
• 23:03 I have to change my tam to the pon. #
• 23:35 Mr. Aorta wants to talk to you! Hear the cries of the carrots!!! You fuckers!! #
• 23:55 Evidentally I look JUST LIKE a WWE diva. #
• 10:22 What good is a supposed best friend if they never answer their phone. Currently screening for a new one, submit applications. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter Now you can rest easy, knowing my inner most thoughts and movements.

I went to my friend Brenna’s birthday party Saturday night. (Though, if you go by my text to Christina, I was “drunk at Bernna s parteeeee.”)  She asked me to bring food, so I brought Janna but then was severely disappointed when no one noshed on her thigh. I also brought a bottle of wine and then demanded that Brenna open it immediately because Mama’s kid had given her some shaky hands. I drank a big cup of Merlot entirely too fast, got nice and warm, discovered some kind gentleman had brought a case of Woodchuck, and my mental reflexes quickly went downhill from there.

But it was a good time. We laughed a lot, mostly I laughed for no reason much like the criminally insane (I mean, so I hear) and punched Janna’s arm a lot. I even got to explore Brenna’s basement, in the purest, non-sexual sense.  

Brenna’s friends were nice. Liz (whom I’ve met previously and already knew was rad) and Diana doled out cigarettes to me (and Diana kept poking Janna’s belly which I was glad for); Nick was my designated bottle-opener throughout the night; Jay entertained me with tales of psychedelic cats and crystals; Dave showed me a picture of his cat licking its ass and then said I look like WWE diva Jillian Hall (I Googled her when I came home, and while I do look like I’m on steroids, my jugs are nowhere near as mountainous); and Willis, after blessing us, showed off his art portfolio AND invited us back for a feast, at which point Jay blurted out that he wants to slaughter his own lamb and I was like, “Damn, this party done got GOOD.”

Happy birthday, Brenna!

Christina and I went to Buffalo, NY last weekend to see two of my favorite bands, Pierce the Veil and Emarosa. It was fun, sad, awful, good, lucky, traumatic, frustrating and confusing all at once, and I would love to write about it, but the up-and-down theme has continued on through the rest of the week, leaving me exhausted and angry. When I’m released from this fucking cosmic headlock (seriously, my life is a fucking folly), I will get that trip written up something proper.

(To sum up the sentiments of this week: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?)

Until then, I’m wasting time on Lastfm. My profile had been collecting dust for years, but it’s all shiny now and if you’re on there, you should add me and we can sit around, staring at each other’s user pics and not saying anything.

(P.S. It’s serial killer Xmas card time!)

On the way home from Buffalo last Sunday, I was in such a rush to get home to my kid (who, coincidentally, was the one I was in such a hurry to get AWAY from when I planned this short vaca; oh, nerves) that I forbade Christina to even THINK about stopping for lunch. I ended up lunching on string cheese and mixed nuts from the passenger seat and I’m not sure Christina ate anything at all, out of fear. It’s like she’s Amish, and I’m God.

Needless to say, I was rearin’ to go come dinner time. Since she wasn’t leaving for home until Monday morning, I decided it would be fun, nay — A CIRCUS-HAVIN’ GOOD TIME –to round up Henry and Chooch and hit up Mad Mex. Blake ended up coming over so we hit up Janna and made an impromptu dinner party of it.

I don’t think I have ever had a bad time at Mad Mex. If I’m not getting ridiculously blitzed off of margaritas and chucking lemons at Janna’s eye, then I’m busy having not-so-subtle crushes on the waitstaff. Only once did I have to send my food back, and not even that ruined my good time.

But I can hands down say that Sunday night was the best time I have ever had at Mad Mex. Maybe even ANY restaurant. I succeeded in getting half-past buzzed on a pumpkin margarita, had ample opportunities to make fun of Janna, failed at setting a good example for Blake and Chooch, and sailed a couple of winning smiles over to our waitress Nicole who was too busy crushing on Chooch to notice.

We brought back a mini bottle of ketchup for Chooch from Buffalo. It came with the eggs Christina ordered for breakfast and my immediate thought was, “Aw, it should be on Blue’s Clues!” Fucking motherhood, man. The old Erin’s initial inclination would have probably been, “Aw, this should be on condiment porn for midgets!” But I digress.

So Chooch of course loved the mini Ketchup and took it under his semi-abusive wing. He insisted on bringing it to Mad Mex with us, and we, Henry and I, as his fearful parents, know better than to defy our master. The ketchup was resting on the table in front of him when our waitress Nicole came over to take our orders. Noticing it, she said, “Oh. I can get you a bigger bottle if you want…?” We explained that it was essentially his pet, that he brought it from home. “Oh, I got it. BYOK.” Maybe I was just high off of human contact but I nearly pumped my fist with enthusiasm for her response. BYOK. My future funeral parlour’s name.

Honestly though, Nicole spent more time conversing with Chooch than the rest of us. She even brought him a veggie platter with ranch and ate one of his carrots. Chooch looked at me, like, “Can you believe she just ate one of my fucking carrots? This broad’s got bigger balls than Dad.” It was awesome.

At some point, I looked around and maybe it was the liquor and guac talking, but goddamn if I didn’t get all teary eyed and think to myself, “Aside from Chooch, I don’t have blood-ties with a single person at this table, but they’re more family to me than my actual family.” (Barring my brother Corey! He’s the only one I still talk to.)

And Chooch was a little fucking angel. It was unbelievable. I don’t think he swore once, and he only tossed a few items at the very beginning, but that ceased once he met Nicole and she massaged his aching need for the spotlight. She liked him so much that she picked him up as we were leaving and gave him a big hug. Hello, please come babysit for me, Nicole. PLEASE COME BABYSIT.

Overhearing Blake whining over not getting enough ice cream (setting a good example for his brother), she brought him another serving. THAT IS GOOD WAITRESSING. Nicole is the waitress of the year. And she was wearing leg warmers. You can’t go wrong with leg warmers. Unless you’re Christina, then I’m sure you could find numerous ways to go wrong with leg warmers.

I demand a monthly Mad Mex dinner party. (KARA???)

Two weeks ago, I was doing some really serious thinking. It went something like this:

“What should I waste my money on that I don’t really need at all, but might use someday, but probably won’t ever have a need for in my life? Other than a 1980s prom dress?”

And of course the answer was a very obvious “gas mask.”

So I logged on to ebay and had the extraordinary luck of being the highest (and only) bidder on a glorious gas mask that was made in Canada. (The description mentioned this at least seven times, so I figured this must be very important. Plus, my friend Francesco is Canadian and he’s cool, so that made me feel secure in my choice of all the various gas masks trying to tempt me with their apocalyptic swagger).

After I paid for it, I received a receipt saying that, hooray, it had been shipped to my mother’s house. My current ebay account is listed under her stupid address because my old account is on the black list since I owe $7 in fees and have tried to pay it but I guess my money isn’t good enough for them and they expect me to send along a vial of my blood and some teeth too. Usually, I remember to change the shipping address upon winning all the shiny pieces of junk I choose to add to my garbage dump. I texted my mom: a gas mask will be arriving at ur house sometime next week. dont be alarmed  – its mine.

She called me last Monday and said that it had arrived, and that she would bring it over the next day. Because I’ve known my mother for twenty-nine years now, I  knew that meant, “I will bring it over when nothing good is happening on BlogTV. So maybe sometime next week. Or you should probably just come get it yourself. Unless you have something at your house that I might be interested in, then I’ll come over. No, something other than Chooch.”

And then something happened: we had our billionth fight, via text, about the fucking election. I half-expected a clown to arrive at my front door, with a cookie bouquet and balloons in primary colors, to commemorate the ocassion. But instead, I only walked away with the knowledge that my mother is a racist and has no respect for me as a person. The latter I already knew, so I was a little let down by my souvenirs.

My reply to her all-capital text of GET EDUCATED AND STOP BEING IGNORANT U VOTED 4 A TERRORIST, was a succinct, “Plz leave my package on ur front porch.”

Last night, Janna swung by my mother’s house and her way home from going out to dinner with us (she lives a few minutes from my mom’s house).  She texted me immediately and said it wasn’t there. Naturally, I fumed up the house with my anger. Exactly the reaction she was anticipating, I’m sure. She lives to boil my blood. I flailed around the couch, spewing out swear words soaked in spit, and babbled about revenge and justice.

Considering my options, I asked my brother to please tell her to put it on the porch. Then, for added motivation, I tried to get Henry to call her from his phone, but he tried to lie and say he doesn’t have her number, when I know he does, because he didn’t want to get involved. But when he found out Christina had been nominated to call, he suddenly found my mom’s number in his phone. (I deleted her after the horrible things she said to me last week, and I never knew her current number by heart anyway.Nothing makes me feel warmer than a good old fashioned contact deletion.)

So Christina reluctantly called and left this wishy-washy voice mail saying that we were on our way to get it and she’s sorry to bother her, but could my mother please put the box on her porch? I was so disgusted at how polite and suck-uppy Christina was in her message, but she sputtered, “I don’t want to get involved! I’m certainly not going to make any demands!”

Christina suggested I wait until today, calm down some. But I was peeling out of the driveway at 10:30. The fifteen minute drive was accented with the smooth sounds of soft rock and me punching the steering wheel and yelling FUCK without warning.

When we pulled up the drive, it went like this: Christina gets out and paces the length of the porch several times, using the glow from her cell phone as a gas mask beacon. I quickly see where this is going and throw my car in park. I barge right in through the side door, stomp through the laundry room, push her yapping dogs out of the way, and find her stewing in front of the computer, MySpace reflecting off her face.

“Who is it?” she called out nicely. Then she saw it was me and curtly continued, “Oh. What do you want?”

“I want my package,” I huffed cooly.

“Oh, it’s in the garage. The door’s open, you can get it from the outside,” she answered in clipped tones.

FUCK YOU. I’m so fucking tired of her lame ass psychological games. In the garage? Really? You couldn’t have just put it on the front porch, you psycho head case?  I slammed the door on my way out, walked over to the garage, pulled out the box from the small opening she left for me, and chipped a motherfucking nail in the process.

Christina met me back at the car and said, “Oh thank God, you got it. I was knocking on the front door and ringing the doorbell but she wouldn’t answer. I was afraid she was going to call the cops on me.”

And that would be textbook Val, to do so. I mean, she once called the police on her OWN DAUGHTER.

And gas mask? That is the story of how you and I came to be together. I admit, you aren’t really a national treasure, or even an object that I kind of, slightly, a little bit covet. However, gas mask, you had inadvertently become a pawn in my mother’s sickly stubborn world and the longer she held you hostage, the longer she kept me tied to her crappy life.

But gas mask, now you are safe in my home. You belong to me, and may we have many picnics together underneath a sky filled with ash.

I hope you all vote today! If I can vote with a pernicious toddler in my company, anyone can. Pretend you’re ordering a custom peep-show if that’s what it takes to get you to leave the house and touch a screen.

JUST GO VOTE. (And ignore the people who try to belittle you and take away the integrity & validity of your decision. Like my mother, who inundates me with crude anti-Obama texts and spams strangers via MySpace bulletins and isn’t even registered to vote. And my co-workers, who openly opine that anyone who disagrees with their opinion is a retard.)

Every October, my Girl Scout Troop (we were the laziest troop ever and never really earned any badges. Though I did earn one for making up a pelvic-thrusting dance to NKOTB’s sensational holiday hit “Have a Funky, Funky Christmas”) would hit up a local farm, where we would be set loose to paw at the bountiful mounds of pumpkins and fight mercilessly with each other (young girls are so charmingly bellicose). And apparently, slap fruity bows atop our pates.

A few weeks ago, we took Chooch out to that same farm and the first thing we saw was a sea of cars shimmering in the fucking hot ass sun. (Seriously, it was nearly ninety that day which kind of confuses the brain to believe you’re setting out to pick seashells, not goddamn autumn farm-fruit. My feet were screaming, “WHY NO FLIP FLOPS??”)

Triple B has long sold out in the name of sweet, sweet commercialism, like so many other of our local farms. (One of which is owned by my relatives and I have boycotted it for the past eight or so years because fuck you, money-hunrgy hoes, for turning a place that owned such a quaint spot in my childhood memories into a mecca that would have Martha Stewart fingering herself through her fucking chinos upon arrival. Plus, they think their apple cider is God’s fucking jizz and it IS NOT ALL THAT.)

Bitterness aside, we paid the exorbitant fee for an all-access neon green wristband to hump our wrists and then wove our way through the overly-excited urban dwellers who ambled around like ricoceting pinballs, unable to comprehend the clear country air and the absence of the highway’s obnoxious heavy metal.

From the onset, my motto of the afternoon became, “Where are all the fucking pumpkins?” Sure, there was a very small clearing near the entrance of the rip-off carnival, where several stalls were semi-filled with Halloween’s official gourd. It was almost an afterthought, like the head farmer briefly stopped swimming in his money vault long enough to point to the sky and declare, “I reckon we oughtta have some pun’kins for the city folk to be buyin’ up. Mabel, go scatter some out thar’ next to the shanty filled with granny’s overpriced apple butter.” Honest to god, these pumpkins were frozen mid-lull, looking so pathetic and dejected that I was afraid to look too closely, for fear of projecting them with anthropomorphic sympathy and winding up with a cornucopia of adopted outcasts.

We skirted past the pumpkins and flashed our wristbands at some blase woman guarding the entrance to a fence, beyond which was a hill bustling with activity and screaming children.

Try to look past the frozen proof of Henry’s Neanderthalian gait, if you can, and marvel with me over the wasted earth that could have been better suited for pumpkin hills, which I would then climb like a giddy child, only to have that fun adventure end with anal violation via pumpkin stem. (A true account that happened to me when I was a youngun.) Instead, it appears the farm’s pumpkin crop went into the ingenius creation of corny diaramas. An acre’s worth.

I almost burst vessels trying to figure this one out. Then I was all, “Oh, it’s fucking Harry Potter” and moved on.

Tubes that pierce and plow through soil make me nervous so I let Henry havethe pleasure of accompanying Chooch down the Liberty Tubeslide. What if some asshole kid shat himself and smeared it all over on his trip down? YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT’S IN THERE. Better that Henry and Chooch find out for me.

I noticed that there was a continuous succession of wagons pulling along chattering loads of assholes. Of course, the hayride was NOT included in the price of admission.

I was tempted to shell out the extra cash just to see if the tractor was transporting them to some secret arsenal of pumpkins, glistening with the magic crack cocaine of Eden and ripe for picking. But then I was distracted by a penful of baby chicks.

“Would you like  to pet one?” a young farmhand asked Chooch. Chooch’s “It’s Animal Abuse Time!!” alarm sounded and he sweetly said, “K!” Immediately, his fist of torture tightened around the chick’s neck and we all screamed, “No, no, no!” in terrified unison. Then Henry and I laughed nervously and quickly dragged Chooch away.

Triple B turned an entire barn into a walk-through haunted house. While there were no live actors, the scenes they set up through-out were decent and effective, enhanced by sensor-triggered air jets and a creepy soundtrack. “They must have put so much money into this,” I said, using my best “I am capable of showing respect” tone. Suddenly, I wasn’t so bitter about paying so much to get in.

In the end, we left there with two cookies and a jar of mustard. The next day, we got our pumpkins from a small, roadside nursery which had a bigger selection and cheaper prices. So there, commercial farms of America.

Henry must really love me because he won this super fly fucking phenomenal piece of 1980’s shit for me on Ebay. He must have known that the production of my thirtieth birthday party would certainly have to be halted if I didn’t have the perfect prom dress to wear. I feel like this dress needs to send a telegram to Uggs, demanding its name back. The only way it could be any uglier (aside from the fact that it will have a one Erin Appledale sausaged into it) would be if I wore it WITH Uggs.Seriously, someone originally paid $230 for this slipshod collage of metallic taffeta and lace.

Yes, my birthday is in July and yes planning has already begun. It is going to be big because I’m tired of having sad and pathetic birthdays and everyone is invited. There will be tombstone cookies! THERE WILL BE (MIGHT BE) A PHOTO BOOTH! THERE WILL BE BLOOD!

Almost a year ago, I made the big scary leap from LiveJournal – my home since 2001 – to my own website. It was dark and lonely for awhile, and then there was the incident where Henry deleted some of my posts and I plugged his asshole with a stick of dynamite, but then everything calmed down and blogging became fun again. There’s not much interaction on here, as opposed to LiveJournal where I had a crowded friends list several years in the making, but I do like the fact that I feel less censored, like I can reveal more of myself. I found myself caught up in a clique that was all about who could be the bigger douche on the Internet; all about e-sucking the most dicks. I didn’t like that. It’s less about popularity now, and that’s a good thing. LiveJournal was like the devil to me.

However, sometimes I think, “It would be kind of cool to know who is actually reading this shit.” So please, if you read, let me know. It doesn’t mean I’ll expect you to be an active commentor from here to eternity. I won’t seek you out for bone marrow someday. Just give me a little shout out, tell me what you like about my blog, what you hate about my blog, what you’d like to see more of, etc.

For instance, I was thinking the other day that I am probably going to make my Tweets private, since I only post them here for my own posterity anyway. I imagine they must be annoying to read.

So please, say hello. Tell me a fun fact about yourself. If you have a blog too, let me know so I can add you to my paltry blogroll.

Give me a good soup recipe that I can slide under the locked steel kitchen door for Henry.

(If you’re reading this on the LJ feed, can you please comment over here for this one?

I don’t always remember to go back and check the feed for comments! I’m a pain in the ass, I know. Henry reminds me daily! Sometimes HOURLY!)

Today we took Captain Vulgarity to the Apple Fest in the ultra conservative farmlands of Western Pennsylvania. One has to park in various fields several miles from where all the apple action goes down and board chool buses doubling as shuttles. Our bus was pretty quiet, and the whole way there I sat with clenched muscles and pinched nerves, praying that Chooch wouldn’t start snarling spontaneous “Asshole“s to the elderly couple adjacent to his seat. The excitement of being on a school bus for the first time seemed to work effectively as a cuss retardant, thank the fucking Lord, so I was able to focus on the adorable lesbian couple in front of me, mouthing along to West End Girls and kissing the top of each other’s heads. Seriously, I wanted to paint a cupcake couple painting for those lucky assholes. (I don’t know WHERE Chooch gets that word.) I tossed a few resentful glares over my shoulder at Henry, who does NOT mouth the words to awesome synthpop songs or kiss me lovingly atop my crown. BUT MY GIRLFRIEND DOES.

If you like kettle corn, the apple fest is a fine place to spend a Sunday. If you like personalized wood-carved toy flutes and crafts made with puffy paint, then the apple fest could potentially complete your mantle collection. Do you like face paint? YOU WILL LOVE THE APPLE FEST. How about the tones of Jimmy Buffet cover bands colliding with whining kids and the grinding horror of chainsaws? Then the apple fest is like one mother of an orgasm contained on one whopping acre.  Is the tied and bound body of your latest victim incomplete without an apple gag? You can buy ’em by the BUSHEL at the apple fest!

For someone who is not interested in any of the above (the last one, maybe someday), my typical I Hate The World venom was sort of tempered. I only said, “This is so fucking lame, ” once. ONCE. (I’m either growing up or someone plopped a Valium in my tea.) I had one goal, and one goal only: Eat some applelicious delicacies. Keep that pulled pork away from me.

We let Chooch go on some kiddie rides and molest some farm animals. (I saw a retarded man clap after he pet a sheep and I seriously almost died. Between that and the drugfreeworld.org commercials, I’m wondering what the fuck is going on with my heart-frost and estrogen levels.)

Ninety percent of the apple-humpers there were sporting Steelers jerseys and I felt slightly angry about it. But then I saw THREE WHOLE PEOPLE in Penguins shirts and I felt less alone. Chooch cheered when he saw one of those people, too, and I shouted, “That’s my boy.” Then I looked up to the heavens and mouthed “Thank you” when Chooch didn’t tack a gritty “Asshole!” to the end of his cheer.

We followed some shoddy and ill-placed signs for a hayride, hoping to keep Chooch’s attention masturbated since it was growing close to his naptime and his ornery side was beginning to peak. The designated area for the apple fest just isn’t large enough to hold all the fruity wonders and delights that are to be had, so the activities and vendors tend to leak down onto a nearby street. The hayride depot (I don’t know what I’m talking about) was situated next to a church. Henry pointed to a sign on its steps and said, “Let’s go see that.” Because my eyes are as bad as my ears (if not worse), I read it as “Come see the trans.” I was intrigued that a church would have transvestites on display for us hee-haw apple-folk. “How progressive,” I said out loud.

But it was just some model train display.

In the church’s basement, a bevy of booths were set up. As I walked past a stand of necklaces, I accidentally made eye contact with its purveyor, who flitted her hand and said, “They’re made from paper mache!” I fake-smiled and said, “OH OK” and hurried along before she compelled me with the Holy Spirit and Mod Podge. It stunk really bad in there, like church craft fairs often do. Some kind of horrible odor bomb of cooked cabbage, Avon perfume and shitty diapers. Chooch began acting like an orphan who was force-fed caffeine capsules and then turned loose on the world, so we yanked him out of there in time to go on the lamest hayride ever, where I was seated across from some older God-fearing woman who glared at me every time I looked up at her and her teenage daughter who had a broken foot and chowed on a bag of kettlecorn while staring dispondantly off into the horizon. Chooch only said “asshole” once, but no one heard him over the put-put of the tractor’s engine.

The tractor-driver let the wagon glide to a rest on top of a hill, where our screams would be heard by no one for miles and miles and miles. Slowly, he turned around, and as though he were in some sort of cigar and whiskey-flavored fugue, he slurred, “Six feet of snow….nothing but the moon in the sky….what do you think the view would be like up here?” No one seemed to know what to say, so I looked at Chooch and said awkwardly, “Pretty awesome, huh?

” The only other person who humored him with an answer was the God-fearing woman, who curtly replied, “Nice.” I kind of felt bad for that old hick; he was just trying to fire up some camaraderie, after all.

Maybe if he would have added flagellation stations and bleeding Stigmatas to the vision, God-Fearer would have been more excited.

There really wasn’t much to see out there. Several cows, but that novelty wears off pretty fucking fast, especially when Chooch got to pet pigs and sheep on the actual festival grounds. In fact, I’m not even certain the hayride was a part of the apple fest. It was probably just some neighboring farmer trying to make a quick buck because his crops sucked this year.

After that disaster of a hayride, I finally got to have some sugary apple slop. Standing in line, I was certain I wanted apple crisp, but as we got closer to the front, that apple pie looked simply to die for, so I changed my mind. Henry went with the apple crisp and we took our plates of fat and calories inside where some old broads were quilting on a raised platform, watching everyone eating at the tables. Awkward.

After two bites of my pie, I stole a bite of Henry’s apple crisp, deemed it tastier than my pie, and arranged for a switch.

“Good thing I know you so well,” Henry grumbled. “I was going to get pie myself, but I figured you would be disappointed and wish you had ordered the crisp.

” It’s a good thing, having someone studying my indecisiveness so thoroughly since 2001. He’s somehow always one step ahead of me.

After that, we got in line  to board a bus back to the lot. Some older gent, who took his job way too seriously, shouted commands at us before he’d let us get on. “THE BUS IS APPROACHING. BEGIN FOLDING YOUR STROLLERS NOW. GET IN THE BUS AS FAST AS YOU CAN AND PLEASE FILL UP THE SEATS STARTING AT THE BACK OF THE BUS FIRST.” A hearty brow-swipe followed, and then he stepped to the side to let us through. I’m certain he was reliving the good old days of the Korean War.

We were the first ones on and I was determined to follow instructions.

That guy seemed like the type to march aboard the bus and throw out the rule-benders by their ears. So I plunked down in the very last seat, just like my friend Rosa.

Five minutes later, the bus was pulling away, and there were only about ten of us on there. An old man in front of me mumbled, “He was so adamant that we fill up the back of the bus, and there’s hardly anyone on here.”

IT WAS FUNNY BUT I GUESS YOU HAD TO BE THERE.

I really, really want to write about the Chiodos show. I do. But every time I try, I get all emotional and hormonal and feel inspired to do nothing more than weep on a mound of studded belts, razorblades and post-hardcore albums. I am hoping that the veil of post-show depression will have been pierced by this weekend and I can resume that thing called “being an adult” and begin to properly nourish myself and spell correctly once again. Seriously, my brain is tramping around on some other planet lately and it’s starting to scare me.

In work-related news, my new job is pretty fucking cool. It’s so laid-back there and it’s really nice to be working in an office again.

And no one here wears Crocs and country Jamboree shirts, which is A-plus. I will write  more about  my co-workers soon, but so far they are all normal, funny, and super easy to talk to. The best part is that they fill me in on gossip so I’m not sitting there like the lame new girl, wishing to be included.

We’re going to Target now, where I will buy myself a new pair of Converse as a hearty pat on the back for keeping a new job for a week without quitting.

Today was a cruel reminder that summer is coming to a close. Aside from the fact that all the awesome amusement parks are done-zo (though I still have one more to write about, as soon as I get all my swear words loaded up in the blogging cannon) and the fair circuit has exhausted itself, there was a constant chill in the air all day that made me want to do nothing but cuddle on the couch with my runny-nosed kid.  Because of said chill, I tried to get Chooch to wear jeans and a hoodie but he absolutely freaked at the thought of having his limbs completely swaddled in cotton after two months of dressing like a Californian. The hoodie has ROBOTS on it. I would wear it if it came in my size.

Chooch likes to admire it, but he runs every time I scrunch it up to prepare for his gigantic head. He’s in for a rude awakening this winter when he’s walking around in the snow in barefeet and a tank top, and here comes CPS to take him away from mommy and daddy.

In other news, I got called back in for a second interview today. I signed some papers, took a clerical test, passed the clerical test, and was sent down the street to engage in some obligatory cup-pissing festivities. Thankfully (depending on how you look at it), I quit indulging in meth back in ’94 and had to give up heroin after my veins collapsed, those bastards.  So I would imagine my results will come back in good standing. And I didn’t even have to have someone urinate in a condom and shove it inside my vaginal cavity.

During the first interview last week, there was mention of an online psychological test, so that should be a lot of fun.

With luck, I should be employed again soon. Now I’m making Henry take us out to eat. It’s an pre-celebratory “Erin Might Have a Job” occasion.

But I’m considering it my reward for sulking in a stinky waiting room at the clinic for an hour, waiting to be drug-tested.

I sat amongst vagrants, now give me cherry pie.

This picture has no correlation to the words below it, other than IT MADE ME SMILE.

I entered one of my photos in an Etsy Challenge. Please vote for me, I have an inferiority complex.

Go here to vote; my photo is the one with the owls. THANKS!

Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 16:07 removed my phone from under my ass, noticed I was on hold w/ my friend Lisa & connected w/Janna. Ass-dialing, I’m a gold medalist. #
• 09:58 I need a spitoon for when I play poker. And then I need to learn how to play poker. #

• 15:28 HENRY JUST TURNED DOWN MY MUSIC. THIS is why he’s on my Asshole Parade t-shirt. #
• 15:48 Detective Henry is questioning the neighbors about the syringe I found outside. If he was on Days of Our Lives, he’d be in the ISA. #
• 16:21 Henry to me, with disgust: “calm down. Blake gets in the car and you lose 10 yrs.” #
• 17:02 Blake and I just unsuccessfully tried to find henry something fashionable to wear to a wedding. Henrys motto is DO NOT LIKE! #
• 17:07 twitpic.com/9her – YOU SUCK #
• 19:02 There’s a scene kid in my car! #
• 00:34 Sleepover at my house, holla. #
• 01:20 Watching MTV Hits with Christina while Blake is trying to sleep on the chair. Not as exciting as my riotous laughter makes it sound. #
• 11:26 Christina just admitted to being the equivalent of a 15-year-old boy. #
• 12:11 @GraveDirt Henry loves Sheetz restrooms! #

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