Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 17:57 I think I just got asked out and I’m lol’ing internally. #
• 21:12 I’m just going to let Chooch name all of my paintings from now on. #
• 23:15 If u ever wanted to know what I was like as a young lass (& still) watch Jon&Kate+8. Mady is me. I am Mady. #
• 23:46 Speaking of peeing, I wish I had some almonds. #
• 11:28 God you hear one song and it just ruins the whole day. #
• 17:51 One of the guys at work told me I look like Alice in Wonderland. I blushed because my mind goes right to the porn version. Of course. #
• 22:03 I’d be drafting my suicide note right now if I was an Islander. #
• 10:37 My surly son allowed 10 sec of cuddling b4 realizing what was going on & shouted, “No, go!” Now he’s off yonder calling cats assholes. #

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Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 18:42 Santa told blake to pull up his pants. #
• 19:22 The patrons of Denny’s let out a collective sigh as we exited. #
• 19:48 Henry has apparently been reading literature on how to raise teenagers. #

• ---

• 08:28 Henry cleaned the bedroom so it no longer looks like a dormroom. Would have tipped him but he no leave chocolates on the pillows. #
• 12:41 I’m bringing puffy paint back. #
• 15:41 Supposedly I melted the handle to henrys pot when I made Chooch mac n cheese. I wondered what that noxious odor was. #
• 16:47 If I ever lose my mind and start shooting, it will be in a craft store. #
• 20:32 I’m taking my quest for a new bestie to public access. Do it up Paris-style. First requirement: someone who actually picks up the phone. #
• 20:41 Or maybe my show will be “I Want to Be the Hump on Erin’s Back.” #
• 09:25 There’s a good possibility I was just called a pee-cow. #
• 09:39 My son just mastered the main players of the color wheel not too long ago, &here I am throwing ‘ecru’ at him. “That’s not brown, dummy!” #
• 12:22 Henry child-proofed our bedroom door knob but now I can’t get in, either. #

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It’s that time of year for the obligatory, oft-painful portrait with a wrinkled, disgruntled retiree whose wife makes him don a red velvet suit to pay for a HoverRound. I had been priming Chooch for this for the past few days, and he was fully prepared to march in there and demand Hotwheels and train tracks, maybe a nice bottle of merlot for mommy and some copies of Butt Love for daddy. We picked Blake up on the way because, well, a scene kid on the lap of Santa might be pretty funny.

We got there and Chooch was pissed because there was a family of three kids in front of us and God forbid, Chooch had to wait. How dare anyone hold Chooch back. I was annoyed because all three kids wore clad in matching Steelers jerseys. In case you didn’t know, I hate the Steelers. Seeing this was more of a monstrosity to me than those corny crocheted sweaters adorned with festive pins that blink and play tinny renditions of Jingle Bells. The kind of sweaters home ec teachers wear, you know the ones.

When it was Chooch’s turn, he balked. Henry had to push him up the plank to his sudden death.

Briefly, Chooch’s face gets all contorted, his cheeks flush with horror, and he lets out a helpless wail. Henry and Blake calmed him down (I was busy being a deadbeat mother and stood off to the side, laughing inside my hands.

Blake was all ready to join Chooch, but then Santa told him to pull his pants up. Blake obliged, but it pissed him off so he came back and stood by me. I had to turn around because I was cracking up so bad. Later, Henry admitted that he agreed with Santa, going on to add, “He’s my son, I don’t want to see his junk hanging out.” But only because he’s his son. So if it was another sixteen year old boy, it would be OK? Perhaps Henry should consider a seasonal gig as Santa for next year. The extra money would be nice; mama needs some supplies for the meth lab.

In the end, Chooch acquiesced and perched on Santa’s sleigh (I’ll use that in my Santa slash at a later date). I think he started to understand the concept, that this was one of those circus acts performed mainly to make mommies happy, one of those occasions where kids get to make a small payment to the Mommy Carried Me For Nine Months loan. Yes Chooch, this is about Mommy, not you, so suck it up and smile for the fucking camera.

I like how Chooch and Santa both have the same posture, kind of like the holiday variation of the gangsta lean.

(As I’m writing this, Henry is walking around in his boxers, conducting business on his cell phone. I keep waiting for a Risky Business-slide, but I think he knows he could very well break a hip.)

My grandma has been in a nursing home for the past few weeks. They say it’s temporary, that she’ll get to come home once she gains back use of her legs (I attribute her muscle deterioration to my aunt Sharon, who kept her holed up at home like a prisoner and would often forbid me from visiting). I hope these things are true, and that if she does get to return home, Sharon will clean up the mess that she and her dog have made, so I hear from a little birdie. (I’m talking mounds of dog shit left to amalgamate with white shag carpet, THAT kind of awesome mess. Oh, Grey Gardens indeed.)

I visited my grandma in the home on two occasions, but she seemed tight-lipped, paranoid, anxious for me to leave. But yesterday, I met my brother Corey there and was relieved to see that Sharon wasn’t around to monitor things.

Corey and I walked down hallways which smelt like we had stumbled inside a walk-in medicine cabinet. Every so often, I caught a whiff of Desperation and Lost Memory, too. It scared me.

Reaching my grandma’s room, we found her asleep. Not wanting to wake her, I turned to a nurse who was across the hall, watching us curiously (Corey and I are kind like Durrr and Duhhh when we’re together, donning deer-in-headlight visages and stumbling with suspicion) and said, “That’s our grandma in there. She’s sleeping. What do we do?”

The nurse exclaimed, “Jeannie? That’s my GIRL! She so FUNNY. You know she funny right?” I agreed and when she turned her back, shot Corey a “wtf, grandma’s FUNNY??” look. He just shrugged.

The nurse woke up our grandma, and I braced myself, I clenched my asshole, I waited for it. But she seemed pleasantly surprised to us. And then she spent the next hour regaling us with the goings-on of the nursing home residents. She seemed coherent, happy, genuinely pleasant. I can’t remember the last time I saw her like that, smiling and being so chatty. Especially following my grandfather’s death, she has a tendency to be quite snippy and anxious to throw jabs. She loves to remind me that I’m a disappointment of colossal proportions.

But on this day, she seemed entertained by my life updates. She asked about Chooch and her eyes held real honest-to-God pride when she looked at pictures of him on my phone.

There was one hairy moment when she brought up my mother and our current stand-off. “She gets tears in her eyes when she talks about you,” my grandma lectured. Oh I bet. Tears from having one less person to borrow money from.

The subject was quickly changed to Anna, the resident Sophia Perillo. “Oh, you have to meet her, she’s so funny! We all sit around waiting to see what she’ll do next,” my grandma said, laughing at the thought.

I recalled some wheelchair-bound lady parked at the nurse’s station when Corey and I had arrived. I got the sense she was a real spit-fire, so I said to Corey, “Maybe that was Anna asking for juice when we walked by.” Then to my grandma, I asked, “Does she have white hair?”

My grandma looked at me dumbly and Corey mumbled, “I think they ALL have white hair, Erin. It’s kind of the trend.”

Then her ninety-something roommate started coughing up something so tragic-sounding, I can only guess it was her ghost. And that was our cue to leave.

Since my mom is being a sack of rotting assholes, I decided to take Thanksgiving into my own hands. And then promptly handed it off to Henry.

I have never hosted a holiday meal at my small house before, and I know that Henry is just shitting his pants with delightful anticipation. In fact, he just came fromw ork and mumbled about needing a nap because he has “so much to do tonight.”  See? DELIGHT. Shitting his pants with it. He has asked me at least twenty seven times if I’ve noticed how small our kitchen is. I always shrug and ask, “What does that have to do with anything?” which causes his face to darken and tremble, like his brain is about to blow.

My contribution? Scouring the Internet for like, AN HOUR, looking for delicious side dishes that do not require meat and do not ask to have crunchy onions hidden within their folds. Then I found some lady’s cupcake blog and wasted at least twenty five minutes gagging on my saliva like an epileptic so retarded she can’t even choke on her tongue right. Eventually, I had a proper menu put together.

It was going great until Henry realized one of the recipes required a cheese that costs approximately $15 a pound. “That’s more than the turkey!!” he yelled in front of the cheese display at Giant Eagle. He promised to find a poor people substitute but that was two nights ago and curiously, I haven’t heard another word about it. I’m sure he’s devising a way to use a log of Velveeta. In any case, whatever he comes up will probably be right at home on the paper plates it’ll be plopped on. We doin’ this bitch up RIGHT.

I asked Henry yesterday if there’s anything I can make. “Yourself scarce,” he answered.

Fine, I’ll go sit in a bar until dinner’s ready HENRY. At which point, I may or may not be home, depending on what my new-lover-from-the-bar’s got cookin’ at home.

Happy (day before) Thanksgiving, have some music.

My New Underage Homies

Somewhere in between salivating over the extensive candy spread that was being sold as skater’s fuel and Christina trying to fillet herself with a saw, we braved the cold in order to have a cigarette. This is where, beneath rain that was trying desperately to be ice, we met Jordan. Boasting an I <3 Haters t-shirt and braces, Jordan proceeded to give an argument that he was, in fact, 18 and oh brother could we please spare a smoke? Apparently, his argument was convincing enough for Christina to flick him a Camel with no hesitation. I guess he felt obligated to give us some chatty as payment, as he hung around and told wild tales of being the only black kid in his school who likes hard music. “Well, except for one other black kid. But he’s gay.” He then went on  to say that being gay is like the new goth, and Christina and I agreed fervishly, as we had just made fun of a faux-lesbo couple inside the show. They were literally dragging each other around, holding hands with feigned passion, and then quickly scanning everyone around them to see if anyone was noticing. It was the lamest thing I think I’ve ever seen. Kind of like when Christina wears bandanas as headbands.

Then some other youngin’ with a nearly-Canadian accent ambled over, skateboard in tow, and weasled his own cigarette from Christina, the human tobacco dispenser. She’s like an anti-Truth billboard. He wove yarns about chain-smoking Camel Crushes and coughing up blood. “They were recalled, you know,” he said in earnest. Christina looked horrified because evidently she’s been smoking them too. I waited for her to fall asleep that night in the hotel room before chanting, in a soft, monotone whisper, “Smoke more Crushes. Have another Crush. You think Crushes are better than pot. Smoke them all day long. No more food, just Crushes.”

I think that kid’s name was Kyle. He looks like a Kyle, in any case. Kurt. Kam. Kleatus. He was going to give Christina a cigarette as soon as his friends came back in the car where he left his pack. But that’s like basically saying, “What, baby? I put on a condom, I promise.” She told him not to worry about it, which is a good thing considering THAT CAR DOESN’T EXIST.

The Bathroom Condition

I don’t generally make use of the facilities when I’m at shows because club bathrooms make me feel like I’m walking into an STD incubator. But I had been drinking a torpedo-sized can of Monster and kind of really sort of had to go.

The stalls weren’t too bad. I was able to enter one without the need for a hockey stick to slap away sullied tampons or soggy wads of toilet water. Soggy from the commode water or emo tears of angst, who knows? I was able to pee without worrying some rare bacterial eel from Asia was going to swim up from the pipes and enter my vagina. I was even able to wash my hands with a lovely aromatic hand soap and not that orange shit that reeks of hospitals and  high school science labs. A very surprising jaunt into a public restroom, to be sure.

But I did not attempt to return to the bathroom later on and here is why: Two girls  were hogging the sink area, posing sexily with each other, lips all smooched out and dripping with glittery lip gloss, taking their photos into the mirror. The one girl’s hip was jutted out so far that it kept grazing my thigh as I tried desperately to suds up while fixating on my hands and not at the creepy sexual circus that was opening its big top right next to me. The worst part was that they looked like they had ended up there accidentally after leaving a Hollister sale and decided, “Oh what the fuck, while we’re here let’s update our Facebook pics because OMGWE’REATAROCKSHOW!” They looked to be in their early twenties, making this display completely unacceptable. I wanted to toss some Maroon5 tickets at them to get them to go away.

Maybe I should have just looked for a nice photo booth to piss in.

The Worst Moment of My Life

Sometime after my accidental immersion in restroom eroticism, Jonny from Emarosa was back behind the merch table, not being noticed. Christina wanted to go talk to him, but I kept saying I didn’t want to. I knew what was going to happen: I was going to get up there, he was going to look at me expectantly, and I was going to blubber all over his pants. It happens all the time when I meet people in bands that genuinely affect me. So Christina is all, “Well, I want to meet him” and somewhere inside the pit of my soul, the thirteen-year-old in me reared her unreasonably jealous head and whined, “THAT’S NOT FAIR I LIKED THEM FIRST AND I LIKE THEM MOST.” Still not wanting to do this, but also not wanting her to meet him on her own, I reluctantly trailed behind her with my head down.

Here is where I am going to be honest: this was a really painful moment for me. It hurt me so deeply that I haven’t wanted to write about this trip at all and I have barely talked about it even with my friends. But here is what happened in a nut shell – Jonny essentially didn’t notice me at all because as usual, boring old Erin was eclipsed by Christina’s showy charm and no matter how many times I tried to talk, he would always go back to her. So of course, she gets this brilliant idea to try to make me look like the super fan, which backfired and made me look like a fucking loser. Oh look, it’s the new Suicide Smoothie from Jamba Juice, and it’s seeping from my pores. We probably only had a minute of face time with him, but it dragged out in excruciating intervals and I could hear my own stammering voice, laced with fear and doubt, as though I was screaming to be heard outside of the fishbowl on my head. After I told him he was awesome for the FOURTH time (wtf ugh), I thought the game warden had finally arrived with the shotgun but NO. NO NO NO that fucking tampon Christina had to go and be a fucking backstabber by asking if she could take a picture with him. So then it was all, “Here Erin take this photo of us” and then I don’t know which of them had the brilliant afterthought to include ME, the one who actually LIKES HIS MUSIC AND OWNS EMAROSA’S ALBUM, but the next thing I knew, I was in the asshole picture too and let me tell you that picture is like keeping the jizz of the trucker who raped you in the rest stop THAT IS HOW SICKENING this momento is to me. Horrible. Awful. Painful.

I vaguely remember almost tripping over someone’s bike as I retreated. I almost wish I would have. That would have been the richest ending to this story. AND THEN ERIN WAS IMPALED BY THE SPOKES OF SOME THIRTEEN YEAR OLD’S BIKE AND BLED OUT ALL OVER THE FLOOR BUT THE SHOW STILL WENT ON THE END.

Later that night, Christina had the audacity to say that the most traumatic moment of the night for her was that goddamn Benny Hill Show scene with the fucking Mountain Dew can. Oh, well la de da. I was just psychologically mauled back there by the merch booth, but hold the phones, Christina didn’t know where to set down a can of fucking Mountain Dew. That bitch is lucky I didn’t haul off and wizard kick her fucking cartoon face right then and there.  God, get fucked.

Anyway, it’s always nice when you take solace in someone’s music and then when you try to tell them that, they act like they would rather by q-tipping their dickhole than sharing the same air as you. But to quote Christina, after we walked away, “OMG JONNY WAS SO NICE SQUUUUEEEE” and you know I’m pissed off when I write the word “squee.”

Trying not to let it ruin my night, I consoled myself by going back to scene kid adoration and trying my best to enjoy Breathe Carolina’s set while blocking out the horror show that had just transpired, knowing I’d have the rest of my life to replay it over and over and over in my head like that fucking 1-800-MY-LEMON commercial that I hate so much.

I wish I had been there with Purple Hood. I bet she would have acted like half of a faux-lesbian couple with me, holding my hand tenderly while not forcing me to talk to Jonny. Maybe she would have won me a cute pink stuffed sea barnacle from a Claw machine after the show, braided my hair and told me I was pretty while playing me a mix tape full of Seaweed and Sunny Day. Then the next day we’d go to the mall so she could get her cartilage pierced and then she’d buy me a bracelet at Hot Topic and maybe we might stop for a Slushie at 7-11 and talk about how rad Jennifer Aniston is (Team Aniston FO’ LYFE). Shit, now I want to date that girl.

And then later I hugged a Teletubby. People in costume always prod my desire to dole out hugs. I don’t know what it is, but at haunted houses especially, I’m always wanting to dry hump every last Joe in a Kmart mask.

And then I made Judas tip him.

At some point, Pierce the Veil came on and I was able to go back to that sensation of inner peace for awhile. I was a little sad though that Henry wasn’t with me, because he likes them too and their songs always make me think of him. I was partially aware that Christina wasn’t even really watching the show, which annoyed me but whatever. She broke up a chick fight at one point because she always has to meddle. Me? I’d have liked to have seen how that would have panned out, but whatever. I will say, however, that by the  time Christina stepped in, the back of the one girl’s head looked like what’s beneath Tyra’s weave. It was all nest-y and knotted and I can only imagine how badly her scalp must have ached. I wanted to know what started the fight, and for whatever reason, I dwelled on that for days following.

This dude was standing near the front with us and it was kind of like having Henry there. Old? Check. Earplugs? Check. Glasses and 1980’s THE SERVICE ‘stache? Check. Except this guy was shaking his jock all over the place. He was INTO IT and it was incredible. He was also recording a lot of the show, and I was worried because there were two young girls in front of him who were dancing with each other. It started out innocently, but before I knew it, they were essentially simulating sex. The one girl kept throwing her head back and a few times it hit my arm. I was afraid they were going to get me pregnant so I stepped to the side. So yes, I was worried that the Bizzaro Henry was clandestinely filming them for some sick, underground clothed porn ring, but then I think the one girl was his daughter. Which, depending on how you tend to view sex in the 21st century, is still alarmingly awkward.

Also next to me was a young kid with gaudy fake eyelashes who I assumed was a chick until he leaned over me to shout in a husky tone, “Is Monica here?” There was definitely a bobbing Adam’s apple. The youngest trannie I’ve ever seen in person (and the first scene trannie), as I happily jotted in my diary later that night.

I really like Pierce the Veil because a lot of their lyrics are about soul-crushing love and suicide and just being fucking miserable. Among my favorites are:

“Please understand me when
I’d rather see you dead
Than live without me, so thirsty for more
Beyond the sea blue light I met the love of my life
She’d rather see me dead than face me
I like your starry eyes, they yell surprise! Surprise!
I’m in love…but not for long”

***

“Another boy without a sharper knife
The moment, that’s where I
Kill the conversation
Wrap this up
With a knife that loves to feel
How do you know how deep to go before it’s real “

***

Plus, there’s some screaming too which stirs the anger I always got brewing in my veins. I love you, Pierce the Veil.

I am done with this fucking saga.

Part I Part II

Technically, Blake’s sixteenth birthday was last Monday, but we didn’t get to do it up right with a cake until today. Janna and Henry’s mom joined in so that the obligatory Happy Birthday serenade had more of a full-choral feel and less of that chirping cricket sensation. However, they also made sarcastic remarks during a viewing of Jon and Kate Plus Eight which made me get all defensive. I HAVE YOUR BACKS, GOSSELIN FAMILY.

Since Blake’s mom just had a party for him on Friday, we left tradition bleeding out like road kill on a highway shoulder, eschewing the standard birthday cake in favor of two halves of speciality fare: pumpkin prailine and chocolate mousse. Broaden the kid’s cake horizons, you know?  Chooch made known his desire to blow out Blake’s candles (and really, if he hadn’t, I’d have to suspect that he was some sort of alien baby from a planet where children 10-and-under aren’t entranced by dancing flames) and Blake very graciously allowed for this to happen. I was impressed; I was always resentful when my younger brothers stole my candle snuffing spotlight on my own jacked up birthday. I guess that’s what true sibling love looks like right there. Thank you, Blake and Chooch, for illustrating for me what could have been if I wasn’t so busy being cannibalized by jealousy and fury.

After we ate cake, Henry’s mom made funny faces at my artwork and Blake’s piercings simultaneously while Chooch lazily watch Max and Ruby from the quiet sanctity of his sugar coma. There were so many things I wanted to get Blake but just couldn’t afford (for example, his own piercing parlour), but he seemed to like his gifts we settled on so I guess it wasn’t too much of a bust. It was what a normal American family might consider a “good afternoon.”

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. #

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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.