Corey came over Sunday night, as did Janna, and we stayed up talking until 2am.

It was really nice and somewhat cathartic since we did a lot of family ranting, and it made me realize that we have more in common than I thought.

Today, he leaves for a semester in London.

Have fun, Corey! Drink lots of Strongbow, listen to the Cure and most importantly – SEND ME SHIT!

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In his general high octave whine, Chooch is demanding a refill in his cup.

Henry asks what was in it.

“Hot chocolate,” Chooch answers, right before deciding that I should get it for him instead.

“Because she got it last time, and you will not know how,” he explains to Henry, in a tone alarmingly cross and indignant for such a small child.

“There’s not much your mother knows how to do,” Henry mumbles, pulling the milk from the fridge.

“So it can’t be that hard.”

It feels good, laughing that hard.

——————-
There is so much snow here in Pittsburgh and it’s making my house feel like the duplex version of the fucking Overlook, but instead of a kid riding around on a tricycle chanting REDRUM, I’ve got a Chooch riding around on a tricycle chanting obscenities and, with just a roll of his eyes, evoking more chills than those creepy dead twin girls.

This is the perfect weekend to watch horror movies. What are some of your faves?

Look, I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I haven’t been outside since last Wednesday. Is everything still the same out there? Have the zombie legions come skulking through the turf yet? I wouldn’t know. Cars could finally be flying and I’d have no idea because some mysterious virus has rendered me a shut-in.

I thought I was feeling better on Friday, so I exercised. Then I got sick again. Then on Saturday, I thought I was feeling better. So I exercised. Then I got sick again. I felt better that night so I watched “Paranormal Activity.” The realization that I wasted 90 minutes watching two of the bitchiest people ever to get a movie deal made me get sick all over again. Every time I get off the couch, my muscles get all trembly and my hands turn to ice-mitts and I basically roam around with a sad look on my face until Henry catches me afoot and yells, “YOU’RE SICK, WHY DON’T YOU REST, STUPID?”

Since Wednesday, I have eaten little other than cheese sandwich halves, frozen yogurt, and have had an undeniably craving for Orange Julius. And even those decidedly non-menacing foodstuffs leave me floating inside a nausea balloon. I’m not pregnant, so don’t even joke about that. Seriously, just don’t. Nothing pisses me off more than when someone insinuates that I don’t know I have a fetus incubating inside me, like I’m some fucking failure of a woman who can’t tell the signs.  And if I were pregnant? Well, move over Mary. There’s a new angel-fucked bitch in town.

It feels like The Mono, to be frank.

All I know is that I want to be playing outside the house someday soon. Maybe in February? If society will still have me by then. Please, don’t forget about me, society.

Also, this shit looks like a good time-passer. Ask me a question so I can have something to do while stewing in my pity.

Hello, here are two points of interest to preface the meat of this post:

1. In all my thirty years, I have had very limited experience with libraries. Sure, I loved library days in elementary school when Miss Dittoro would read us some book while we all sat on the carpet. And in high school, someone coaxed me to sign up to be a student librarian so I could spend my study halls bullshitting with friends in lieu of inhaling stale “food” fumes in the cafeteria, where most study halls were held. (Little did I know that when we had some lame school award ceremony, my name would get called among all the student librarians, wherein I had to walk down the auditorium aisle, take the stage and stand there while everyone in the crowd pretended to applaud but were really mocking all of us book dorks.)
2. Last weekend, a local lady on Twitter alerted me to the fact that not only is there some Facebook fanpage for people who grew up in my town, someone had written on the wall ABOUT MY BLOG. They listed the exact address and urged everyone to peruse a certain category where they could find photos I’ve taken and stories I’ve written about “characters they all know and love.” Hello, panic attack. My blog experienced a stat-spike the likes of which it hadn’t seen the Great LiveJournal-Oh Honestly Erin flame war of 2008. Sunday night I went to the gas station down the street from me to buy the paper (which I’ve never done before and you can ask Alisha, I was so confused) and literally hesitated on the threshold because I was afraid someone would know I was Oh Honestly, Erin and subsequently jump me.

There, you have been properly educated and can now advance to the rest of this post.

Henry is a card-carrying member of the Carnegie Library. There’s one on Brookline Blvd, right by the laundromat he and Chooch go to, so while the washing machines are sterilyzing our wardrobe of cat urine, he and Chooch will get all cozy in the library. Sometimes they even check books out.

Now, I usually will just buy books, or trade with friends. But, embarrassingly, I have been reading the House of Night series and haven’t been able to justify buying the next book in line since Christmas is so close and I have that child-thing that I should be spending my money on. It’s been killing me, not knowing what’s going to happen to that whore Zoey and her lame friends who think they are twins and say things like, “That boy is so fiiiiiiiine” and I’m like, “STFU who do you think you are, SWV?” So Henry, having all the answers as usual, goes, “Why don’t you check the library’s website?”

This is how I learned that I can sign up for a membership online AND THEY WILL RESERVE BOOKS FOR ME WTF. Yes, it’s practically 2010 and I’m just learning about LIBRARIES while everyone and their pastor is walking into people, squinting at their Kindles.

Yesterday, I got an email saying that my book is in and they put it on some super special shelf for me. I wanted Henry to get it for me, but then remembered that my membership is only temporary and I have to get the actual card when I go in.

“Can’t I just give you my ID and you can tell them that I’m retarded and can’t make it in?” I pleaded, because libraries are SCARY.

“Even retards go to the library,” Henry spat, insinuating that I’m a cause much greater lost.

I checked the website and it said they were open on Christmas Eve until 3pm. I didn’t want to wait any longer for this book to be in my (teenaged) hands, so I made Henry and Chooch get bundled and we set off up the street. Because god forbid I should go to the scary library alone, even after Henry practically drew me an Army-regulation map of what to do once I walked through the automatic doors. I have to bring my flock with me. Safety in numbers and all that.

A block away, I started to get anxious. “Oh my god, I’m so scared,” I repeated several times, mostly to myself but just loud enough for Henry to hear and take great pity on me. You should have seen me, clutching the email printout of my library membership to my chest and doing the I-Have-To-Pee jig.

Jesus probably had more composure walking with the goddamn cross.

“What you SHOULD be scared of is being recognized on this street,” Henry challenged. I let that sink in for a second, and then quickly smoothed my hair closer to my face as a shield.

I risked my life walking down that street only to find that the library was closed. Those motherfuckers.

I’ll probably just go back to scamming Doubleday.

In the car on the way to drop my stuff off at Wildcard, I go to Alisha, “Wanna hear something cute about Chooch?

“

Because Chooch is her second favorite subject behind the art of masticating cherry pie after it’s been ridden bareback by a gang of STD-laden missionaries for the Church of Satan, she said “Sure” with rich vehemence.

“Well, we were watching the NHL Network—” I began, excited to weave my web.

“Why’s it always gotta start with that?

” she spat, fronting like she doesn’t enjoy a good slapshot.

Then I dropped off my stuff and drove through a gritty, rapist alcove of a parking garage downtown Pittsburgh, just for kicks.

Hello. Through a beautiful miracle, I was able to upgrade my downtrodden Blackberry with the busted-ass trackball for an iPhone. Now I can finally join the Mob.

Isn’t that the criteria? No?

Oh wait, but I can join the mob of Feist-loving, scarf-wearing hipsters at Starbucks?! Bonus! (<—OMG that was a joke.)

In other news, Thanksgiving is this week & I’m so excited to be finding shit for Henry to make. My mommy is having dinner at her house, after refusing to acknowledge that special November Thursday as a holiday last year. I love Thanksgiving. Mostly for the food. Ok, only for the food.

If you’re American and you’re reading this, what are your Turkey Holocaust plans? And no matter where you’re from, what’s your favorite holiday dish?

And this concludes my typing practice. I’m proud to report that I didn’t chuck the phone once. I just curtsied.

My awesome friends Bill & Jessi got married yesterday by Elvis in Las Vegas. I wasn’t able to turn enough tricks to finance a trip out there, but luckily there was a webcast. So Alisha came over and we ate cupcakes while waiting for the big show to start. I mean, you know it’s a Really Big Deal when Alisha willingly puts down the Chia Pet she’s grooming to come over to my house to watch something on the computer.

Chooch pretty much had no idea what was going on, and every time Elvis started to sing, he’d slap his hands over his ears and yell, “TURN THIS DOWN!” Alisha was closest to the speaker, but she was too busy ogling Jessi’s boobs to rescue Chooch’s hearing.

You can’t really tell from a photo taken of a computer screen, but Jessi looked ridiculously hot in her dress. How could Bill concentrate??

And Bill’s hair was ridiculously pomp’d up. It was impressive. How could Jessi concentrate??

There was a major party vibe to the ceremony and I can’t imagine anything otherwise for the two of them. It was so sweet and fun to watch, but I wish I could have been there in person.

TOO CLOSE!

Congratulations, Bill & Jessi!!

I’m cheating and posting what I wrote for Blogathon, because it concisely sums up how I feel about TWLOHA.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had bouts of depression, mania, suicide dreams, the urge to hurt myself or break things. It got really bad when I was in high school and I knew something wasn’t right, that living like that couldn’t have been normal; and the school’s social worker knew that something wasn’t right, but it was something that my family just didn’t want to hear. Still, my mom abided by the school’s wishes and got me into therapy, though she held true to her theory that this was all “because of a boy.

”

But it wasn’t because of a boy and it was the first time things started making sense to me. Depression, bi-polar, any mental illness, wasn’t something that was being talked about that much and it wasn’t like I could call up a friend and be like, “Hay girlfriend, how ’bout that chemical imbalance, oh hahaha.” I did a lot of suffering in silence pre-therapy. If I tried to talk to my family about it, I was laughed at. Accused of trying to get attention. Well, um, yeah. I kind of was. Attention to the fact that I needed help.

But then my mom pulled me from therapy. I went back to being unmedicated and it didn’t take long at all for the heaviness to come back over my heart and the noise to refill my head. For years and years and years, when people would ask me, “Why did you drop out of school?” I would say I didn’t know.

But I do know. It was that. Depression was making going to school into a horror show for me. And my family still laughs at me when I try to talk about how I feel. Still. Because they don’t know how to handle taking it seriously.

These days, kids talk about it. And if their family is as close-minded as mine, they have other people to go to. It’s not taboo anymore. And with organizations like To Write Love on Her Arms, kids are starting to realize that there is help, and hope, available to them. And becauseTWLOHA is very tightly affiliated with music and Warped Tour and you see bands wearing the shirts, I think that makes it even better for the kids because it gives it less of a clinical help-line feel and more of a haven for kids to know that it’s OK, that they WILL BE OK.

I wish To Write Love on Her Arms was around when I was in high school.

Yeah, this picture wasn’t hard to accomplish AT ALL. No, I just had to bribe my son with a shitload of chocolate, threaten to get Santa’s fat ass on the phone, and promise a lifetime of wedgies until he finally conceded. I dont know WHERE he gets his bull-headedness. And the unfortunate inability to stand tall under bribery’s iron fist.

You guys remember the organization I blogged for during the last Blogathon?  Well, this Friday every one can be a part of their movement just by writing a simple word on their arms. I’m doing it, and you should too. Take pictures and share them on here with me!

This is a reminder why I love hockey, posted mainly for my own sake.

I’ve been around the past week or so, but not in blogging mode. I hate when that happens, because blogging is like, my favorite thing to do.  Here is a succint (hahahahaha) breakdown of what I’ve done the last 8 days.

• Went to Rogers, Ohio for some flea market that has enthusiasts all over jerking off in porta johns over its large expanse. I believe my immediate thought on this shit hole was, “Yeah, it’s huge, but that just means it’s more room for people to dump their shit.” It was like “Crap, shit, junk…oh that’s sort of cool…shit, trash, tetanus-hazard.” There were also pens upon pens of puppies and Henry said NO to each one. Fucker. And then every time I would see something I wanted (which wasn’t often), he’d be all, “THEN WE HAVE TO CARRY IT ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE CAR.” Well, excuse me, geriatric. And I love how he slapped down $3.50 for a fucking jar of horseradish with no hesitation. It was a decidedly non-fun outing.
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• Last Saturday, we went to Living Treasures, which is a glorified petting zoo. But they also have tigers and shit like that there too, and it’s better than the zoo in that you can actually get up close without having to peer through snot-streaked glass. Chooch rushed us through, and then we went on a really lame “safari” ride, which cost an extra $4 per person to essentially see everything we had already seen, but from a different angle, while two huge horses pulled us in a wagon. Basically, I paid $4 to have a baby sit next to me and pull my hair the whole time.
• One of my old high school friends was in town for her bridal shower (which I couldn’t attend, oops), and stopped by Monday night to visit. She’s one of those crazy cats who decided to save herself for marriage (no seriously, I actually do respect her for that), so she is positively GIDDY that her wedding is coming up in less than a month. She was talking to me about birth control and was all, “Oh my god, you don’t use birth control??” and I’m all, “No and I never have.” She looked absolutely appalled and asked, “But you guys use condoms, right?” Now look, Henry and I have been together for what – eight years now? But the look on her face, that innocent, sexually naive look, it made me say, “Oh, of course! Sometimes, three at a time, with a rubber band for good measure.” It was an awkward convo that I wanted to end ASAP. Luckily, Chooch farted, and said friend is secretly a nine-year-old boy so her laughter distracted her for a good ten minutes.
• Painted. Painted painted painted painted. I have some family portraits I’m trying to knock out and I’m also trying to get some new pieces together for a shop that’s slated to open in October. I met with the owner last week and she’s interested in not only selling some of my things in the shop, but she also offered me a showing in the gallery that will be in the back of the shop. She was like, “Think it over and let me know” and I was like, “OK. I have my answer. It’s yes.” Because seriously, it’s not like anyone is beating down my door with opportunities like that. And the shop is in a trendy/arty part of Pittsburgh so I can pretend I’m way cooler than I actually am (which is not at all.)  Unfortunately the only chance I get to really paint without distraction is after hours when the males of the house have gone to bed. I seriously need my own apartment somewhere far away from civilization. My productivity would sky-rocket.
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• Friday, one of my old friends from school – Liz – was back in town, visiting from Philly. We were tight in middle school, and were friends through high school but admittedly I had gone down a dark path, so she and I didn’t really hang out that much. I hadn’t seen her since 1997, so when I met her in the lobby of her hotel, it was super surreal. We went to Panera and basically shared pieces of info on old classmates we had collected over the years and reminisced about when my family housed a foreign exchange student from France during the summer of ’92.
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  It’s funny how there are vignettes from childhood that stick with you as an adult. I remember being at her house in 7th or 8th grade and her mother sternly saying, “Elizabeth, stop making unilateral decisions!” That was the first time I had heard that word, and I know, I just KNOW the wordwhore in me orgasmed. I still think of that moment whenever I use or hear that word. I told her about that and she didn’t remember it, but thought it was hilarious. Anyway, it was a good way to spend the afternoon and I hope that, now that Facebook has reunited us, we can get together again in the future.

• I went to Lakemont Park yesterday with Henry, Chooch and Alisha. My brother Corey met us out there because it’s near where he goes to school. Expect a post about that sometime this week.
• Tomorrow I’ll be posting a new Freaky Feature so you should look for that. It’s an interesting one!
• Henry did yardwork all on his own today. If I still had a reward chart for him, I’d have put a gold star in the column for “One Uninterrupted Hour to Watch One of Your Stupid CSI Shows.” I’d give him two if he would stop blowing the roof off the house every time he sneezed, Jesus fuck.

Most of Saturday was spent with Alisha while she did some big girl shopping. You know, boring shit like housewares and groceries. Mostly I just got in the way, although she did force me to help her stow a heavy shelf in the bottom of the cart at Target. It was funny (to me) because I was basically just touching it with my fingertips while she did all the grunt work.

While standing across from an acreage of paper towel choices, we witnessed quite possibly the funniest thing since miscegenation: A mom-type squeezed past us with her cart, followed by her (I’m guessing) 4- or 5-year-old son who was erratically pushing his cart, if a cart is really his wheelchair-bound grandma. That sight in itself was mildly amusing, because the kid kept skidding the wheels into the sides of the aisle. But then suddenly the mother bellows, I mean full-on unleashes the wrath of nine generations of pissed-off mothers, “Michael! That is NOT FUNNY!” because apparently Michael decided to turn granny’s wheelchair into a New for 2009 ride at the county fair, complete with sparking wheels and popping bolts, and nearly toppled her. And Michael, while his mother is coating his face with a sheen of scolding-saliva, is doing this unrepressed high-pitched giggle, like he knew what he did was wrong but it was just so goddamn funny.

I couldn’t control it. I was dying so hard on the inside that I had to back into the nearest aisle, lean over a shelf and laugh into my folded arms. Then I happened to catch Alisha’s eye, and she looked like she was going to pee herself as well. I REALLY want there to be a reenactment of that for the next Hover Round commercial. “Don’t let THIS happen to YOU.” It could be the next best thing since “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

Somewhere between the bath aisle and toiletries, Alisha was on the prowl for measuring cups. As we’re standing there, a couple encroached on our personal space. The woman part of the couple saw something on the other side of Alisha and let out some high-pitched exclamation that only those fluent in kitchenware can understand as she reached across us to get a closer look. Catching herself, she looked over at us and apologized for being rude, which saved her from becoming an entry in Alisha’s Death To You notebook.

Her husband immediately joined in and joked, “Just hit her! That’s what I do!” Now, I was already giddy from Michael and the wheelchair shenanigans, so this whole situation was seriously fanning the giddy wildfire taking over my body. Alisha still looked a little uncomfortable by the fact that this intensely social couple was pulling us into their conversation. We learned the woman’s name was Melanie and that she’s never peeled an avocado but would consider doing so if she had the clever avocado tool she saw hanging on the wall.

It was about two minutes of high energy hysteria before they left Alisha to pick out measuring cups in peace. (She found orange ones. Orange is her favorite color and she says it in two syllables.)

I called out, “Bye!” making Alisha squint her eyes shut like she does so often when we’re together. (She doesn’t like that I encourage strangers to be social beings around us.) They turned around and loudly wished a good day upon us.

Now, I’m not ALWAYS down with situations like that, where strangers randomly try to strike up a conversation while I’m shopping, but there was something about them that I really liked, almost like they were inviting us to their inside joke party. It was bonding at its most purest. They were leaving right as we were checking out, and Mel and me (yeah, we got it like that) pointed at each other and laughed. As I watched their Steelers jerseys disappear out the doors, I felt my heart sag.

“I’m going to miss them,” I confided to Alisha. “Like, I keep picturing us having a barbeque with them. I might even let them talk about the Steelers.” THAT IS HOW MUCH I LIKED THOSE PEOPLE.

Of course I brought them up a ton of times throughout the day, and at one point I said, “I think I’m going to think about them forever.” Alisha’s  reply, which tested positive for sarcasm, was, “No, not you. You NEVER obsess over ANYTHING.”

Within minutes of leaving Target, I received a text from my friend Justin, whom I haven’t seen in years. He was my first “OMG I’m going to kill myself if we break up” boyfriend back in high school, but we’ve always kept in touch. The text said, “Hey were you just at Target? I thought it was you but wasn’t sure.” Now at this point, Alisha and I were walking through the Toys R Us parking lot.

I read the text out loud to her and yelled appalling, “He wasn’t SURE if it was ME? What the fuck, he’s been in MY VAGINA, for Christ’s sake, and he wasn’t SURE it was me????”

I guess Alisha wasn’t expecting that because she sort of looked a little blanched and her eyes turned into a spinning marquee of #!#@#$%$#@%$, kind of  like a  WTF-version of a slot machine. She kept murmuring, “Why? Why? Why did you have to say that?” while rocking methodically in the passenger seat.

“Well, you know me. It’s what I’m good at.”

“Putting people in your vagina???” she cried.

“No! Making people uncomfortable.” But the more I thought about it, both I guess.

Chooch is going through that phase that I always heard about but never paid attention to: the Telling People How You Really Feel About Them phase. For instance, he knows I dislike my one neighbor (for all you LiveJournal friends, that’s HNC’s wife/girlfriend/thing). She’s like the Ears and Eyes of the block, a gossip perpetuator, a rat. She’s always trying to trap me into her web by pulling me in close and whispering speculations in my ear about all the new neighbors, and then she expects me to rally behind her in her imaginary crusade. And on top of that, ever since Chooch had his step-falling accident in June, I felt like she was looking at me with suspicious eyes, silently accusing me. I also noticed that she had begun to speak differently to Chooch, almost like she was pitying him, which made me feel like a bad mom. So I said one day that I hated her.

And then two nights ago, she was outside and Chooch ran up to her and said, “My mommy hates you!”

Henry was outside when it happened and he said she didn’t say anything but that he’s 99.9% positive she heard him. Now, I don’t really care if she knows I don’t like her, but at the same time, I don’t need Chooch acting as some drama-spawning mouthpiece for me either. So that night, I sat with him on the couch and said, “Chooch, I don’t really hate her, OK? I was just joking.” He looked at me like I was crazy, like he couldn’t fucking believe I was sitting there promoting the art of flip-flopping so blatantly in his face.

“Yes you do!” he shouted. “You TOLD me you hate her! You told me THREE TIMES YESTERDAY!”

(In Chooch’s world, there are only two days: yesterday and Thursday. And everything is always said three times. Not twice, not five times. Three times.)

He also has no qualms expressing his own hatred to people. There’s a loud mouthed woman who’s friends with the infamous Robin from three doors down. Nearly every day, she visits Robin and then as she’s leaving, she always stops on the sidewalk right in front of my house, turns around, and continues conversing with a porch-planted Robin. And I’m always like, “Really? Does the whole town need to hear that you’re walking to CVS to buy a carton of Newports?” I don’t understand why she has to finish all of her conversations in front of my house. And she has one of those deep, distinctive, raspy smoker’s voices too, which makes it even lovelier. Sometimes, I like to peek out the window to see which Looney Toon character is on her shirt that particular day.

Anyhow, this broad drives Chooch NUTS. He’ll be sitting on the floor playing with his cars and then next thing you know our living room is polluted with this grating sonance. He’ll pause in the middle of a Hotwheels collision, make a disgusted noise with his throat and with a great dramatic flourish will whine, “Oh, it’s THAT lady again. God, I hate her.”

She happened to be walking past our house Friday evening just in time for Chooch to express his hatred in person. It was awesome.

I just hope he doesn’t tell the priest across the street the thing I said involving a crucifix and his asshole.

[I have more neighbor news which I will share later, preferrably when I unearth more facts.]

EDIT:

I was just outside and The Broad was leaving Robin’s house. Not ten seconds after I took this picture, she turned back and shouted (and I do mean hollared), “Did you take the keys out of my purse?!?” When she got no answer, she tossed her arms up exasperatedly and continued her drunken cat walk  in white foam mules. I am SO GLAD that happened otherwise I’d have felt like a liar in light of this post.

Broad with the pasty, spider-veined & suspiciously bruised legs, please don’t ever stop your hollering, because it never fails to make me lose it every time.

Dear precious Blackberry,

I was really kind of embarrassed Saturday night when I realized that I was purse-dialing my most recent ex-boss as I left Target. I quickly punched you in an effort to end the call and hoped that he wouldn’t call back.

Well, he did call back, it just took him five days, but the call came bearing good news.

Blackberry, I have my job back.

I had to re-apply for it, and employment probably won’t start until a week or two (barring any abnormalities in the re-hiring process/my infamous black cloud coming back to hover) but holy shit, it will be nice to have a steady income again. Especially since our second income just ended last week. And it’s still a part-time position so I can still piss around with that art shit.

I have no idea if I remember how to do a single fucking there. Oh well!

Blackberry, I’m attributing my good fortune to you, because I believe that my boss forgot that I existed until you decided to prank call him at 9:30 on a Saturday night, making him realize that hey, maybe there was once again enough work down there for a need to bring me back in. Thank you, Blackberry, and my inability to put you in lock-down mode despite everyone’s urging.

Loving you lots like tater tots,

Employed Erin