#20: Obligatory Bathroom Mirror Snap.

I generally would never take a picture like this, let alone post one on the Internet because OMG full body! And also, I’m not actually a teenager (I know, right!?). But the whole point of doing this challenge is well, to challenge myself. I’ve been forcing myself out of my comfort zone and even took a picture of my profile (see further below), which I HATE. But you know, get over it, Erin, right? I mean, God help me if I ever get married (haha, laughs, jokes, frivolty)—how will I be able to stand having my photo taken? I can’t wear an animal mask for EVERY SINGLE POSE.

(I mean, I guess I could….)

Anyway, this was the bathroom at Amel’s and I liked it.

#21: My handsome new boyfriend and me.

So last Sunday, my crew and I were en route to the park where we almost all broke up with each other as a family, when Kaitlin texted me a photo of one of the clown head helium tank covers and said, “This is at Trader Jack’s right now.” Of course I made her go and find out the price and then I made Henry make a giant loop around the city so we could go back in the opposite direction and claim my new trophy. Henry reaallllllly disliked Kaitlin in that moment, I think. Haha.

My hair is so unwashed in this photo.

#22: Sorry, Bloods. I’m a Cripp today.

(I’m still really into apples, btw. Trying to actually get my first tattoo covered with a glorious apple. We’ll see.)

#23: Blanket Burrito.

It’s August outside, Antarctica in the office.

#24: Profile

Ugh, I don’t know why this makes me so uncomfortable. I’m so weird about my photo. If you scroll through my Instagram prior to this challenge, you might see a few pictures of me but they are mostly me and Chooch together, because he’s my photographical security blanket. And then when I would feel brave enough to take photos of myself with the “good camera,” I always had to have a schtick: a Trix moustache. Heart lips. Frosting makeup.

Something that distracts (and detracts, even) from my face.

And I hate hate hate when someone else takes my picture. I guess I don’t really think I’m ugly, per se; I mean, I can walk down the street without getting called Rocky Dennis, but I’m not really what you would call conventionally pretty either. I feel that I have the kind of face that you really have to look at before maybe certain things fall into place and you might think, “OK, she’s alright”–this is on a good day– but then you have to be careful because if you look too long, it all starts to fall apart and you can really see that I just look like a turtle with a Jay Leno chin.

In other words, I don’t think Henry has to worry about Jonny Craig stealing me, haha.

#25: Busy Background.

I’ve been told, several times actually, that I look like a cartoon “in a good way,” whatever that means. I mean…OK? Joke’s on all those kawaii/Harajuku broads who have to go out of their way with wigs and strange makeup when I look animated naturally, I guess? Most of the time, I just don’t want anyone to look at me at all, so herein lies the real challenge of this 30 day thingie!

Also, I wish I could wear that shirt everyday for the rest of my life.

#26: Memento

Yesterday, I couldn’t choose which photo looked least awful, so I photoshopped my runner-up in this empty picture frame. Using my phone. On the goddamn trolley. So, don’t judge the sloppiness of it!

MORAL: All of this is to say that I’m finally ready to stop blaming my insecurities on “that awful job” I had a decade ago, or “the weight I gained from having a baby” or “being constantly criticized by my family.” Fuck that. I’m too old to keep carrying around those excuses. It’s time to stop caring, so thank you, A Beautiful Mess, for holding my hand in some strange way and helping me take the first tiny baby steps to standing a little bit taller. (Even Henry said he kind of noticed a difference, and Henry typically doesn’t notice SHITTTTT.)

But really—four more pictures and I’m donezo, woooooo!!

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

(Ugh.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I totally had a crush on our waiter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes, Brookline, I really fucking love you.

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

This morning, without realizing it, I began to think about my trolley driver. Not like think thinking, nothing racy or scandalous, just a casual thought popped into my head.

The last time I saw him was Thursday of last week. As I slapped my ConnectCard against the orange pad on the fare machine, he cheerfully boomed, “An hour and forty minutes, then I’m done!” I already know that Thursdays are his Fridays (I’m learning a lot about him from the quick sentences he’s able to push onto me as I step onto the trolley everyday at 12:47PM) so I figured he meant that in that amount of time, he would be done for the week. I smiled and mustered up enough faux-enthusiasm for the “yay” that has become my signature response to his jubilant greetings.

Yesterday, I had a different driver. He wasn’t mean like the guy who yelled at me once for trying to insert a flimsy, laundered dollar bill into the fare machine, but he was no Resurrected Bob Ross, either. We feigned polite smiles at each other and then I took my usual seat in the back, where I read a book the rest of the way into town.

It wasn’t until this morning that I thought about it, the different trolley driver and what my regular trolley driver said to me last week. An hour and forty minutes. What if he was counting down to his retirement? What if that was my last ride with the out-of-place mountain man and his unruly facial mane? What if I never had the same driver again, no one to act happy to see me everyday at 12:47 on the dot, no one to make me feel like I was more special than the other commuters who just got a generic “hello” or “how’s it going?” and nothing fancy and personal like the time I went back to riding the tolley after Henry had spoiled me with two entire weeks of having a personal chaffeur and the trolley driver, his face all lit up around his gnarly gray cheek-shrubbery, cried, “HEY! HOW YOU BEEN?! I thought maybe you bought yourself a motorcycle so you could ride to work in style!” And I was mostly embarrassed, but also a little smug that he was paying attention to me and not the hoodrat in booty shorts who had walked on right before me.

And what if now he was retired and I would never get to say goodbye and wish him luck? And why do I even care? Other than it has been nice to be greeted by a friendly, now-familiar face every day when I step onto that awful trolley and begin my daily descension into the depths of Hell.

Yesterday, the new-to-me trolley driver didn’t happily honk his horn once. It was the quietest commute to work I’ve ever had.

****

Today, I was trudging along Potomac Avenue toward the trolley platform when a gruff, yet amiable, voice yelled, “Hello! Hey! Hello!” I lifted my sunglasses onto the top of my head and scanned the line of cars stopped at the red light. And then I saw him looking out of the backseat window of a black Blazer. My trolley driver!

I waved back and yelled an uncertain hello, because what do you say to your trolley driver when you run into him out in public, as a civilian, without the trolley intertubed around him? It seemed so weird and unnatural, seeing him without his forearm resting on the steering wheel of his long, publicly-sponsored carriage.

“I’m on vacation!” he yelled, his untamed mountain ‘fro looking even more carefree than usual, like stationary storm clouds suctioned to his pate.

“Oh really?” I called back and immediately felt stupid. That is the most worthless answer ever and I do it all the time, and all it does is force people to say “yeah” and what a fucking waste of time I just perpetuated.

“Yeah, look at me!” he cried, waving his hands over his body to illustrate that he was free, oh-so-free of his PAT Transit-mandated polyester-blend. His vacation wardrobe consisted of a denim vest with nothing underneath. It was at least buttoned, though. His arms were covered in tattoos, and I suddenly felt kind of perverse and voyeuristic to be seeing him in anything other than his brown Port Authority uniform, so I looked away real quick, focused on the nondescript broad behind the wheel instead. “I’ll be back in two weeks! On…” he paused for a second to think. “…the 27th! You gonna be there?”

I nodded and smiled. “I’ll be there,” I said weakly, swallowing a grimace. Yeah, of course I’ll be there. It doesn’t seem like I’ll be not taking the trolley any time in the near future.

The light turned green and we said goodbye. I continued walking to the platform, happy to know that he was returning on the 27th and I could go back to being the kind of person that a stranger is excited to see. Maybe I should use this time to put more words into my Things to Say to the Trolley Driver repertoire, other than “yay” “hi” and “I know right” (usually my response when he says something about the weather). I even called Henry to giddily brag about my encounter, to which he responded, “You’re so weird.” I think that, after 12 years, Henry still has hopes that I’m calling to tell him something amazing.

As I sat on the trolley, driven by yet another foreign-to-me face bare of any significant hair design, I wondered why my trolley driver was sitting in the backseat of the Blazer when the passenger seat was empty.

I guess when your job is to cart people around all fucking day long, sitting in the backseat might actually be your vacation.

Today at the mall, some broad was all, “Yo can you hold the front of the stroller so that I can ride down the escalator?” She was asking ME to do this because she clearly doesn’t know that I fail at helping people.

Rather than get into some winded discourse about my escalator phobia (I almost perished on one in Atlantic City when I was 4!), I waved her off to Henry, who is always glad to help a Civilian because that was one of the things he learned in the SERVICE, right after how to emulate Erik Estrada.

Meanwhile, Chooch was yelling, “MOMMY ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE A PICTURE FOR YOUR BLOG?

” as I was taking a picture for my blog. Goddammit, things are beginning to get trickier.

Here are some photos of things that happened this summer that don’t involve amusement parks and Warped Tour, which is actually not all that we do around here, contrary to popular belief! :)

This gentleman on the trolley was pouring the contents of an Old English into an empty jug of iced tea. Like you do on the trolley.

THIS IS NOT ICED TEA, YOU GUYS.

It’s looking like I’ll be riding the trolley to work for the rest of forever because things at Henry’s job got totally whack. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to riding the trolley, even though I have the same resurrected Bob Ross driver everyday who pretends to be all happy to see me. There was a good two week stretch when Henry was able to take me to work, and when I returned to my 12:47 trolley ride, the driver jovially exclaimed, “HEY! LONG TIME! Thought maybe you bought yourself a motorcycle to ride to work in style!”

My god. I’m a fucking regular. :(

I won’t see him today though. He’s off on Fridays. (I know this because every Thursday he cries, “HAPPY FRIDAY! TODAY IS MY FRIDAY! I’M OFF TOMORROW!”)

This cat ear ring was only like $3.

This hair band was decidedly more expensive than $3 and came from England, but it was totally worth it.

I still have to get my actual lenses put into these. THEY ARE THE PERFECT SIZE FOR ME!

Here’s some leftover birthday pictures:

Chooch with Kara’s baby Theo, who was only 9 days old and already living it up at Pamela’s for breakfast! (Chooch hates when we meet people at Pamela’s because it means we have to walk there, oh no.) This was on my birthday. Later that day, Janna and I went to Tillie’s for dinner (and I turned the light off on her in the bathroom, which was my favorite part of the day because I love torturing her), and then we met Laura at a movie theater in North Versailles to see The Conjuring which was fucking fantastic and I’m still thinking about it. Laura cried and prayed to her rosary through the whole thing! I’m glad I got to see three of my favorite people on my birthday, but in some sick and twisted way, I kind of missed spending my day with my friends at work like last year because they are so good at making me feel special!

This pretty scarf was left in an unmarked gift bag on my desk last week. I asked my boss Sue if it was from her, and she said no, but then a week later, she was all, “OK fine, that scarf was from me.” Duh! I love it so much!

And my sweet friend Kendahl sent me some beautiful nail polish!

Of course my birthday card from Chooch features a cat. But what I didn’t know until later is that he chose this card because he wanted it to remind me of the time a few weeks ago when Marcy woke me up at 5AM by PEEING ON ME IN MY BED because she was angry at being locked in our bedroom all night (we had the a/c on so we kept the door shut). Marcy, in all of her 16 years, has only peed outside of litter box one other time, and that was when she was about 2 years old and I yelled at her for doing something diabolical I’m sure (probably had something to do with Speck), and she literally stalked back over to where I was sitting, squatted near my feet and peed on the floor while GROWLING AT ME.

So, thanks Chooch.

Henry said Chooch was like, “Let’s get Mommy things that she hates,” which apparently included a Taylor Swift card, so thanks for stepping in, Henry. (But can we all just stop for a second and be amazed at how much like me Chooch really is? I love finding out what people hate and inundating them with it!)

A few weeks ago, my friend Octavia told me she was sending me something for my birthday that required lots of wall space and that Henry would hate it. Henry, thinking for sure it was going to be some grand-scale Jonny Craig collage, was getting ready to prepare a wall in the corner of the basement. But instead, these amazing circus posters came in the mail and Henry breathed a great sigh of relief. Octavia “borrowed” these from light poles in Norway ten years ago and thank god for that because they are incredible! They will have a good home here with me, so thank you again Octavia!

And my boss Joy got me an apple cozy! When I opened it, I immediately screamed, “OMG IT’S AN APPLE COZY!” and she was like, “You KNEW??” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost bought myself one!

I think books make such personal gifts, and this one from Sandy made me tear up a little because it’s the book that inspired one of my favorite Cure songs.

Barb, Gina, Elissa and Gayle hooked me up with so much fun jewelry:

Just my kind of JEWELRY!!!! Barb is so afraid I’m going to poke myself in the eye with the bird cage ring she got me. The tail really is sharp, but I think it’s more Henry who should be afraid.

Wendy and Evonne eating from their Beetlejuice bowls at Savoy a few weeks ago. That was a fun dinner! (Although, any weeknight dinner that doesn’t involve a Law Firm microwave and a Lean Cuisine is a fun dinner!) A little too rich for my Weight Watchers-trained stomach though, so I got kind of sick afterward.

This is kind of birthday-related! A few years ago, Gina and Elissa got me this pretty coffee cup but like a dummy, I chipped it one day while washing it, so it just kind of sat on the kitchen window sill for a long time. But now that I’m on some weird fake green-thumb kick, one of my co-workers gave me a spider plant thingie in a red Solo cup and I immediately thought of a new purpose for my pretty-but-chipped cup. So I brought it into work and Amber2 helped me re-pot it. (And by now you should know that means she did everything herself while I stood there and watched.)

LOOK HOW PRETTY! (Don’t worry, there’s a fake spider in it now too.)

Chooch and Downton Bunny at Tom’s Diner. I’m going to be so sad when he goes back to school and we can’t have leisurely mornings anymore. :(

We had some Jimmy Buffett Buffet at work in July so I made Henry bake these lemon brownies with blueberry lemon lavender frosting. I thought they were super good, but Henry was all, “SOMETHING WAS OFF ABOUT THEM, WAH.”

Ciao for now.

#6: Hand/Eye Coordination

#7: Me and my girl Mary.

#8: Mutual Admiration.

#9: Losing Steam

#10: 34! Woo!

#11: Peppermint Grill.

#12: Wet Hair, Don’t Care.

I’m not even halfway done with this, how can that even be possible?! Things are bound to get weird as I run out of ideas.

****

In other news, hope everyone has a great weekend! Tomorrow night, Wendy and I are going to see A Blood Red Sky but we don’t know where it’s at or what time, only that she bought the tickets last March and told me not to make plans on August 3rd. I still am not very clear on what this even is? (As I was typing this, she called me and it appears that this is being held at a legit location and not some dirty guy’s basement. Damn.)

And then I’m having a birthday dinner Sunday night at some Shakespeare joint which I thought was going to be a tacky establishment (because my goal is “tacky”) but some people at work have said, “No it’s actually pretty nice there.”

Bubble status: burst.

Oh well. At least I can satisfy Sunday’s self-portrait when I cozy up to a suit of armor before dinner.

We weren’t even on the boat yet, and this is what Henry looked like.

The fact that I was so dead set on taking a boat tour of Cleveland is kind of weird for a number of reasons:  I hate river water. Lake Erie scares me. (HOW CAN A LAKE LOOK SO MUCH LIKE THE OCEAN!?) Being on a boat makes my mind reel with impending cataclysm. ASSHOLES take boat tours. But the biggest weird reason is: what is there even to see on a Cleveland boat tour?!

But for some reason I had fond memories of taking this same tour on the Goodtimes III in 2004 with Henry, which is odd in and of itself because how many fond memories of Henry do I really have from back then?

So you might be able to understand Henry’s confusion when I was like, “WE CANNOT LEAVE CLEVELAND WITHOUT BOATING IT UP.” I just vaguely remembered that there were cool bridges along the Cuyahoga, some of which swung out to allow boats to pass, others of which raised in a drawbridge-esque fashion. Even though bridges also terrify me, I though that perhaps Chooch would enjoy this.

I even bought tickets for the last tour of the day from my phone because I was so afraid it was going to sell out before we arrived. WHO AM I?!

Anyway, after Henry nearly killed us by turning the wrong way down a one-way street in the middle of downtown Cleveland, we finally made it to the boat area place and Chooch and I were practically throwing elbows at people trying to get to the will call window to claim our tickets. Somewhere along the way, we lost Henry. But Henry or no Henry, Chooch and I were still going on this fucking boat. It was my dying wish.

Henry found us sitting on a bench, watching the people from the earlier tour stream off the Goodtimes III, which had just docked. I asked Henry where the hell he went and it turns out he was helping some delivery driver back up his truck. Of course he was.

“And then I had to pee,” he continued over top of Chooch’s and my raucous laughter. He helped some guy back up his truck?! Why does he even tell us these things!? And then he mumbled something about how “assholes” like me and Chooch kept walking behind the poor guy’s truck while he was trying to back up and he couldn’t see. Go be a Good (Driver) Samaritan somewhere else, Henry. You’re stinking up my air with all your do-goodery.

“I helped some guy back up his truck. What’s so funny about that?!”

Finally, it was time to board so some nautical person barked into a megaphone that wasn’t very mega for everyone to form a single file line. Chooch and I raced to get into line, going out of our way to cut people off, while Henry just walked casually, like a person who doesn’t feel the urgency of boarding a boat.

When we finally crossed the plank-thing, Chooch and I ran for the upper deck. And it’s a good thing too, because there were approximately…..four other people up there. But gradually, more people made their way up to our deck and I quickly began to rack up entire families to hate.

The worst of which were the Ralph Laurens—my polite pet name for the Von Moneyfucks taking up two rows at the front. The patriarch came complete with a sandy toupee and a white sweater tied around his shoulders. At one point, they had a crew member take a group photo of them and their yuppie spawn so they could retreat to Chateau le Douche and show their staff that they slummed it up with their blue-collared people.

“Muffy dear, I couldn’t find the pâté de foie gras, but I procured us some of this bourgeois delicacy that the commoners enjoy at the ball game. I think this might be quails egg yolk on top.” This is what I imagined he was saying in his pompously bombastic tones as he returned from the snack bar with a plastic tray of nachos. CHORTLE CHORTLE, MOTHERFUCKER.

I guess their yacht was in the shop.

Separating the Von Moneyfucks from us were two couples who weren’t too annoying at first. The one couple was older, the wife was maybe in her early 40s and the husband looked like he was in his 50s and praying for a quick death. They had what I can only imagine was an adopted toddler boy thing. The other couple were in their early 30s and the guy took pictures of EVERY FUCKING THING WE PASSED with his wannabe professional camera while the wife sat there making the older lady feel like shit for being a disheveled mother.

The only real highlight of the tour was when we cruised past an area where a shit ton of murders happened and Eliot Ness couldn’t solve them. Of course the area was some sketchy lot strewn with giant ant hills of garbage and old tires. (To be honest, I actually missed this entire part and only started paying attention when I heard “Eliot Ness” so then Henry had to tell me.)

At one point early on, the mom turned into Speedy Gonzalez and starting making loud ay yi yi arriba arriba noises at her toddler who looked extremely horrified by this and proceeded to sleep for the next three hours probably just to put his mom out of her misery.

NOTICE I SAID THREE HOURS. This was only supposed to be a 2-hour tour, but after an hour into the tour, we were very nearly Gilligan’d.

So, remember those aforementioned bridges? Well first of all, Chooch didn’t give a FUCK about them because he was too busy obsessing over the snack bar and all of its contents which Henry refused to purchase. Second of all, some dude behind us was deviating from the recorded narrator to tell his kids all the insider info about them, which was ANNOYING AS SHIT at first until I realized that he works for a bridge-building company and then my ears started to perk up because maybe that means he has some money to spend on me. Third of all, the very last drawbridge-esque one we cruised beneath turned out to be quite the motherfucker.

Right after the last bridge, the boat had reached the turnaround spot, and I rejoiced because the last half hour had been total bullshit, all this industrial spanse that no one cared about. “Here is where the city gets their rocks.” NO ONE CARES. So of course, it would be on the most desolate part of the river where something would go awry.

We were headed back to that last bridge, which had JUST WORKED 5 minutes ago, but now the bridge wouldn’t raise. The captain had to brake (?) the boat while the moron bridge operator tried to get the goddamn thing to go up and it just wouldn’t budge. So we had to sit there and watch as all these lucky bastard cars got to cross the bridge while laughing at the sadsack tourists who were now stuck in muddy-brown river water, buoying methodically with nothing to look at but GAS TANKS on the left and I don’t know, piles of dirt on the right. Somewhere nearby, someone was probably getting stabbed over a drug deal gone south. It was that kind of area and I was hoping that I wouldn’t get caught witnessing any wrongdoings by a Mexican drug cartel.

The captain came on and explained that there was a “situation that only happens once in a blue moon, probably just a blown fuse” and that the electrician had been called, so here, just enjoy some crackly AM classics* and please try not to kill one another. We’re just going to keep floating here for another 20 minutes and then everything will be fine, you’ll see.

*(I guess this is the back-up for when the boat reaches the end of the river and there is nothing left for the ancient cassette tape to narrate. At one point in the BEGINNING OF THE TOUR, the tape got all fucked up and you could hear someone frantically rewinding and then fast-forwarding, trying to get it to match up to our location. This trip was doomed from the start.)

Oh at first it was funny. Watching the rich people cuddle to “How Deep Is Your Love”; Henry getting all nostalgic over “Muskrat Love”; laughing alone at “Afternoon Delight.” But then 20 minutes had turned into 45. The captain interrupted “Night Fever” to let us know that the electrician had arrived and you know, it should hopefully be any day now.

Ironically, “Blue Moon” came on and that poor toddler woke up just in time to witness his haggard mother dancing to it. “I wish she’d put her hat back on,” Henry mumbled, because her stupid baseball cap covered half her face and it was nice then. The less we had to see, the better. Then the younger of the two couples started drinking beer and apparently thought they were being HILARIOUS drunks. Mmm…maybe to fans of Dane Cook? Tyler Perry?

Chooch started to stress-cry at one point. I jokingly said, “Gee, Chooch. You just HAD to take a boat tour!” and I half-expected him to pick me up with his rage-muscles and punt me off the side of the boat.

He was, um, pretty pissed that I said that.

Mysteriously, the bridge-worker who was once behind me had disappeared. I wondered if he was on a lower deck, poring over blueprints.

Or getting fired.

Meanwhile, we kept catching glimpses of a hard-hatted man pacing along the top of the bridge like Bob the Fucking Bridgefixer. Unfortunately, it took him quite a while to fix it so the assholes in front of us started searching the boat for a deck of cards. Blue Moon Dancer came back and said that there was apparently one deck on the entire boat and someone beat them to it. Finally, a small victory for me. I don’t think I could have handled watching them play cards, but I also didn’t want to move from my seat because I was certain I would get ill. OH AND MY PHONE HAD DIED. I had to sit on this fucking boat with a dead phone. Motherfucker. (Henry’s was dead too and Chooch’s was in the car, waaaaaaah.)

After a while, I started having some pretty dark thoughts. I watched an airplane fly above us and began to imagine it crashing into the river, so now not only will we be stuck on a fucking boat, but now we’re stuck on a boat floating among plane crash carnage. I started imagining a storm coming in from Lake Erie (there actually were storms on the horizon, it looked so scary) and tipping the boat over. I started imagining that the Von Moneyfucks up there had mob ties and their fortune was primarily drug-money, probably some blood diamonds too, and now we’re about to get shot at from a rival Don who wants Sandy Toupee out of the game and THAT IS HOW I KNOW THE BRIDGE BROKE ON PURPOSE OMG.

I snapped out of my nightmare hypothesis mode when the captain came back on to tell us that the bridge had been successfully repaired, but it was temporarily operating on something that would only allow the bridge to literally creep up. Which meant we still had a good 25 minutes to continue to sit there, watching it raise like Huge Hefner’s penis.

Of course, I didn’t get to capture the entire boat exploding with cheers and applause when we were finally able to pass beneath the bridge and make our way back to the dock—which was another hour out of the day. Nearly 4 hours total, I was so pissed, and also slightly delirious.

“They could at least give us our fucking money back,” I cried angrily to Henry.

“Why? It wasn’t the boat’s fault,” was Henry’s rational response.

“I’M GOING TO WRITE A LETTER!” I bitched.

“To who*? The bridge?!” he asked sarcastically.

YES, MAYBE.

*(Henry doesn’t like saying “whom.” It makes his blue collar itch.)

It was after 7PM when we got off that fucking hostage boat, and nearly 10:30 by the time we got back to Pittsburgh. I can’t wait to add this to the evergrowing list of things Chooch likes to throw back in my face whenever we have an audience. “Remember that time that MOMMY made us take a BOAT TOUR and then the BRIDGE BROKE AND WE WERE STUCK FOR WEEKS WITH NO FOOD?! Oh how I hate her.”

Probably the last boat tour any of us will be taking in quite some time. Maybe even forever. Take THAT, boat tour industry.

this was my first warped tour. I saw Itch which was the best band ever! I met chiodos for the second time—it was awesome! we gave them the picture of me when I was two and now I’m seven and Derick said two to seven crazy!

there was a lot of free shit meow meow meow. we passed the Vans tent and the guy said Hey Kid here and he gave me this band dana. I loved going on the water slide I said DADDY CAN I GO ON THE WATER SLIDE :(

I went in the wtf tent which tells about a bunny that they tested make-up on ”it was sad” there was a jacket with baby dolls mommy said it was creepy. I found a doll foot later from the wtf tent!

I said to mommy “f*** the nonsense of your healthcare”

[Ed.Note: I don’t know where he heard that, but he said it ALL DAY LONG & his middle finger was also part of this new routine. One day at Warped Tour and he already has punk ethics.]

look how mad dumb dumb daddy is he’s so mad he had to hold my stuff the whole day muh ha ha ha ha and spend money just for shirts :( he was sad because ted nugget wasn’t there

at the band Handguns they said circle pit! And I called it the psycho hole. I felt sad when warped tour was over I had the best day ever ha ha ha my cat shirt say’s that!

Henry is still recuperating from The Worst Day Ever (what he lovingly calls Warped Tour), so I tried to let him have a low-key weekend. This is something that’s hard for me because I always want to go-go-go, and after years of being so financially strapped that tagging along to the grocery store with Henry was considered “going somewhere,” it’s nice to be able to actually DO THINGS now*. But sometimes it’s necessary to just chill the fuck at home. (I guess.)

*(Don’t get it twisted—we’re by no means rich or anything. Basically went from one echelon of Poor to another slightly higher one.)

That doesn’t mean I still didn’t drag them to a cemetery, though (second of the day for me because I love my dead folk).

Ice cream cone swagggg

We stopped at Sugar & Spice afterward for ice cream. Henry didn’t order any because his new strategy is to wait for one of us to not be able to finish ours. This time, it was both of us.

I got red velvet soft serve in a chocolate chip cookie cone, which was fucking delicious but then it became a swamp of melted goo at the end so I passed it off to Henry because I can’t stand messy food.

Chooch sang Chiodos songs on the way home and I had all kinds of proud mom-love for him at that moment.

And then we actually stayed home! With the exception of sending Henry out to fetch us dinner.

Later that night, we had an impromptu water balloon fight (god, read the picture!) & Marcy tried to run away. Wouldn’t you?

Today, we went to visit Speck & Don’s graves. I picked out sunflowers for Don. Chooch got some kind of typical grocery store assortment for Speck.

Made the mistake of going inside the animal shelter afterward, which always makes me cry because I want to bring all the animals home but you know, who really can? Totally fell in love with this big, fat, fluffy gray girl who I think was 8 or 9 years old.

Ugh, I can’t stand it!

The Yough Trail (a bike trail that runs from somewhere to somewhere, I don’t listen to Henry when he tries to teach us; it ends in D.C. I think?) is right by the pet cemetery so I made Henry and Chooch suffer through a walk with me. I love how quickly the Law Firm Fitness Challenge becomes everyone’s problem!

I don’t know why Henry was bitching though because he got to look at nature and point out wild strawberries and algae. There was a shooting range nearby and I was so afraid of getting hit by an errant bullet and this supposedly “irrational” fear made Henry irritated; so between his infuriating voice of dissent and Chooch constantly making me trip over his fucking scooter, I power-walked ahead of them until eventually I couldn’t even see them anymore when I turned around. It was wonderful! (And also slightly alarming because it would be just like Henry to try to teach me some stupid lesson by leaving or jumping out of the woods with a chainsaw.)

One annoying thing though is that since it’s a bike trail, there are a LOT of bikers. Go figure! Anyway, bikers are really fucking friendly and have a great desire to slap you in the face with their winded salutations. God, you say hi to one biker, you say hi to them all, you know? I eventually just stopped responding.

Chooch really hates walking and his scooter is just stupid, so Henry mused about all three of us getting bikes. I agreed, but under the stipulation that we get matching shirts, like we’re some team of ragtag rejects.

“I want the back of mine to say Mrs. Jonny Craig,” I said gleefully.

“Then I want mine to say I’m Not With Her,” Henry retorted, but I think it should say Not Jonny Craig because I don’t want anyone to think Henry is embarrassed to be my husband. Oh wait, record scratch: the whole Internet already thinks that.

Came home and went for another walk around my dumb neighborhood–without my hindrances this time.

BONUS: When we were walking home from dinner Friday night, this huge, weirdly-shaped plane was flying overhead and Henry practically pole-vaulted to the SERVICE heavens with the boner it caused.

He told me what kind of plane it was but fuck if I care.

Anyway, I guess it was good to stay home because we’re going away next weekend for my birthday, whaddup!

I think it’s worth noting that when I was typing the title to this post, my phone changed “Butler” to “hurler” which should be a synonym since Laura and I wanted to hurl all day.

Hey guess what? This is going to be mostly photos. Enjoy it while it lasts, k? Because the next 8700 installments of the fucking fair will probably break your eyeballs.

Just kidding. I’m trying to be more Cliff’s Notes-y so that I can get caught up and resume writing an entire tome based on a 20-minute trolley ride to work. Or a fruit salad. You guys miss my fruit salad posts, admit it.

If I had to pick only three things to do every summer, the Big Butler Fair would definitely make the cut (Warped Tour and birthday bullshit would be the other two). This is the premier carnival in Western Pennsylvania, you guys. IT HAS ALL OF THE RIDES! And a bunch of other shit that I don’t care about, but other people do, like free country concerts or something?

Henry even busted out a brand new blank t-shirt for the day! I asked him what color he would consider it and he said, “Turquoise-y green.”

Henry called forth the storm clouds with a secret combination of “left moustache twitch-frown-right moustache twitch-sigh.”

“Mmmm, how about we just go with teal?” I suggested. Someone’s getting a motherfucking color wheel for Christmas, boyyyyy*.

*(Please say this in the key of Vanilla Ice.)

Laura and Mike met us out there and I was excited because they were Big Butler virgins. And Laura will ride things with me, which almost wound up being a non-issue considering the first thing I went on with Chooch made me so sick, I had to lay down in the grass afterward. It was the Rock Star and it was only one of those rides where you sit in a row and then the thing moves back and forth and then all the way around. I apparently can’t be spun in that direction anymore, because this is the same sort of ride that knocked me out last summer at Waldameer. And the whole time, I had Chooch next to me, droning on and about the camel he wanted to ride.

He wasn’t pulling a Fear & Loathing — there really was a camel there offering rides, and he could see it from his perch on the Rock Star. I could not see it, but that may have had something to do with the fact that I had my eyes squeezed shut the whole time.

So that is why, when Mike and Laura arrived, they found me on the Quadzilla — a quad ride in KiddieLand. Palate cleansing, etc etc.

One thing to note about the fair is that it is HOT. And I don’t mean like, “Holy shit, there are so many people here I’d like to fuck.” (Because there never ever are.) What I mean is that it’s Are-We-Walking-Inside-Satan’s-Asshole? hot. Turbulent carnival rides, fried food and rednecks waiting for their yokel-okel country concert to start, all while stewing under Hell’s broiler — what a great combination! In year’s past, they’ve set up misting tents but there was nothing of the sort this year, which angered Laura greatly. She kept saying, “They should have those misting tents here” and I kept answering, “I think they used to” but now I’m not sure if this really happened as many times as it felt like or if my head was just playing Groundhog Day games from the heat.

But it’s so worth it. Just look at that majesty!

There is literally no shade on the fairgrounds though. Please plant some trees. Until then, if you REALLY want some shade, I guess you’ll have to ride the Zipper.

Fa-la-la-la-uckkkkkk! Good goddamn I love this stupid ride so much! I was hoping that Chooch would be tall enough this year but he’s still an inch shy. He actually cheered at the discovery of this because I guess I couldn’t hear him over my PEER PRESSURE when he said that he didn’t actually want to ride it. Thank god Laura rode it with me, because there are NO SINGLE RIDERS. I guess they tested it once on an immigrant carny and found him pulverized like a Hellraiser extra.

ZIPPER 4 LYFE! I might get this sexy motherfucker tattooed on my inner thigh. YOLO.

Speaking of YOLO, I tried to get Henry to buy a YOLO trucker cap, and when he and his lifesized frown continued walking hand-in-hand, I considered buying one for Andrea’s birthday but I got sidetracked in my hunt for a Lil’ Wayne belt buckle for her instead.

(Spoiler Alert: I didn’t find one.)

Chooch’s favorite ride. I’m glad he can ride things alone now, because I don’t have the endurance to go on this as many times as he wants. And I especially can’t exit the ride and get right back on like he does. I mean, I want to lose more weight, but purging on rides at a carnival sounds like it would make me cry worse than the Jillian Michaels DVDs I do every day.

Do not ride the bumper cars with Chooch unless you have total control. He’s the WORST. And then he ditched me when the ride was over and I got stuck in a bottleneck of SMALL SCREAMING CHILDREN trying to exit the fucking thing. By the time I escaped, Chooch was back with our group, sitting on a bench, sucking on a lemonade. Fucker.

Not yo’ granddad’s ferris wheel.

I skipped over the Skydiver. The last time I rode that motherfucker was at Lakemont Park in 2009 and my sabbatical from voluntarily torture is still going strong. Maybe next year. (I just don’t understand why they can’t pad the inside of the cages with some goddamn Memory Foam! The physical pain of this ride is way scarier than the actual “plummeting to your death” sensation.

It was so hot, all my photos started coming out red. (Untruth.)

Not even ice cream helped cool us off.

It looks so sparsely-populated on the fairgrounds, probably because 65% of the crowd was shacked up in makeshift infirmaries due to heat stroke and skin blistering. (Please do not fact-check this.)

Be back later with more, oh boy. And VIDEOS too. Can you even stand how high-tech and diverse this stupid blog has become?

Chooch hounded us to get his caricature done at the Arts Festival last month but we kept saying no because we didn’t feel like being there any longer. (The Arts Festival always seems like such a grand idea until we get there and then we all get cranky & bored.)

But Henry for some reason was in an OK mood at the Big Butler Fair last week (correction: he was in a good mood after we let him eat) so he gave Chooch the greenlight. Even told the artist to go for the full-body color option. I couldn’t believe it. This was after Henry bought us a vacation, too! (More on that later.) So now I’m left to believe that Henry has a new side gig dealing drugs.

“You want me to draw you as Superman? Batman?” the artist who I immediately developed a crush on asked Chooch.

“A cat,” Chooch answered in his signature “Why are you asking me stupid questions?” tone.

I took the above picture right when this exchange happened and the artist turned around to laugh with us.

Of course he wanted to be a cat. We were cracking up the whole time, and then the OMG SO ADORABLE artist asked Chooch if he could take a picture of him with the finished drawing because he thought he was so funny.

We bought a frame for it today because it’s definitely a keeper. (Plus, it has the signature of my future husband on it.)

In Marcy news, she still has enough spunk in her to fight a zombie, so I think that’s a good sign, right?

Henry’s Facebook user picture for the longest time was a photo of the three of us from Christmas 2010. I mean, that’s fine, but my face was even fatter then (seriously, try to imagine) and my hair was really dark brown. I really, really hate that picture which is probably why he insisted on being Facebook-identified by it.

And then Alyson took some photos of us when we were on vacation last week and it really made me stop and think about how few photos we have together, as a family.

So I finally made those jerks sit down with me on the 4th of July to update our ghetto family portrait (seriously, can you imagine us sitting down at Sears for some blue marbled-background photos?).  Perhaps someday I’ll quit giving a fuck about vanity and have some real portraits done. With a real camera. That’s being held by someone whose arm is not connected to my body. MAYBE WE WILL BE EATING APPLE PIE UNDER A TREE! And Henry will be wearing real life “slacks”! And a nice hat! And my lips won’t look like they were sliced off by a serial killer and pasted back onto my frightened face into the shape of a smile. And Chooch might be doing something normal. Like holding a baseball mitt? Is that what normal 7-year-old boys do? Who even knows anymore.

I’m partial to the one on top because it lets everyone know that I am the head of the family. Duh. As if anyone needed visual confirmation.

Anyway, there you go. We actually all three exist all at once.

In other blog news, I actually have something real in the works for you guys! Yes—real! As in, something that’s not comprised of 5,800 paragraphs about an amusement park*, videos of Henry eating ice cream, or a deluge of photos from my iPhone. Real substance is on the way! I can only imagine how many people I’ve driven away with my inane bullshit posts. I just really, really, really like to blog, you guys. Even if it’s stupid shit. Who cares about quality on the Internet, amirite?

(* We did recently go to the Big Butler Fair, though….so there will still be the obligatory blog posts with me turning basic carnival rides into sleazy Asian porn vignettes. Sorry in advance!)

One of Chooch and me for good measure. Downton Bunny is ALWAYS with us. I miss Fox!

When my old office-neighbor Angie suggested that we meet for breakfast this morning at either Tom’s Diner or Pamela’s, I was secretly hoping that Pamela’s would get the final vote because the Law Firm Fitness Challenge started today and Pamela’s is a much farther walk for me.

(Yes, FITNESS Challenge—we can do more than just walk this time!!

I can factor in my cardio! I am also the captain of my team!!! We’re the best!)

It dawned on Chooch about 5 minutes into the walk just how far away Pamela’s is. “Wait—stop. Is it by that cemetery?!” he asked in an outrageous tone, clearly remembering being there with Kara and Harland last summer.

(I’m writing this on the trolley and someone just pooped their pants. God, first I had to wait on the platform with a feuding couple of drug addicts and now THIS?

Get fucked, Henry.)

Angie brought her daughter Rachel who is the same age as Chooch. They mostly sat quietly, sneaking sidelong glances at each other and smiling coyly. It was pretty hilarious, especially how piqued their interest was whenever Angie and I would share stories about the two of them acting like Sybil. They’d listen intently and then get this proud “Yeah, I did that” look on their faces.

(Oh god, now the drug addict woman half of the feuding couple has held up the trolley because she’s short thirty cents. OF COURSE SHE IS.)

Then Angie’s effort to dine and ditched failed, so while she was out getting cash (seriously, cash-only restaurants are stupid), Chooch watched Rachel playing some game on her tablet and they exchanged a quiet series of words that I strained to hear but failed.

(Some random guy gave the drug addict thirty cents which is a good thing because she probably only has just enough on her for the two bags of god knows what she’s on her way to purchase downtown. Fucking drug addicts.)

I think they were just testing the waters. Next time they hang out, they’ll probably be running around like the hooligans that I know they both can be.

Kids are so weird!! And so are drug addicts!!

*(I know. I’m getting cornier and cornier. Might as well just succumb to mommyblogdom!)

So, it’s furry time again in Pittsburgh! People either love or hate the arrival of Anthrocon to our sports-lovin’ city. I for one LOVE it, and I know that most of the department at work echo my sentiments. Sandy even postponed her birthday happy hour so that it would coincide with Anthrocon because drinking + furry-spotting = best birthday!

Henry and Chooch took the trolley downtown last night to meet me after work (I even got to leave an hour early!) because Chooch wanted to go “furry hunting.” The thing with Chooch is that he LOVES FURRIES and we’re pretty sure this might be his future. The amount of times he murmured, “I want a tail,” last night was staggering, and really — isn’t that how it starts? No, really, isn’t it? If my plans go through, I’m supposed to be meeting with a walrus furry tomorrow, so maybe he’ll provide some answers.

Chooch casually walked down Liberty Avenue, casually eating an apple, like it was no big thang to be high-fiving purple bears and seeing regularly-dressed people turn around to reveal bushy racoon tails. This is his glory. Life-sized, walking stuffed animals outside of an amusement park or Chuck E. Cheese? Fuck yes.

When Chooch is waiting for his turn with a furry, he acts like I act when I’m waiting to meet a band. It’s hilarious.

I just asked Chooch, “If you were a furry, what kind would you be?”

“A kitty,” he answered quickly. “Of course.” Like I’m so stupid for having to ask. Further inquiring has learned me that he will be a purple kitty.

This guy spoke and it kind of threw us both off guard.

She was my favorite!! We saw her approaching and waited patiently for her to cross the street so we could ask for a picture, but then of course a mob of dickhead downtown “professionals” swarmed over and totally acted like we didn’t exist so that they could have their smug yuppie faces photographed with the bunny. And then of course the bunny didn’t see Chooch waiting (bad peripheral-vision and all), so she started walking away and then while we were chasing her, more dickheads approached. It was the hardest I’ve ever worked to get a picture of a basic mascot.

(Chooch wants everyone to know that he’s mad she gave him bunny ears.)

“She’s so awesome,” I murmured, watching her pose with people.

“Pretty sure it’s a guy,” Henry said.

Chooch caught up to the bunny a few minutes later and called out, “Excuse me, Miss Bunny? Will you take a picture with  my DAD?!” Totally caught Henry off guard and he begrudgingly scrunched up next to her.

“Yep. Definitely a guy,” he sighed afterward.

Inside the lobby of the official furry hotel, Chooch was desperate to get his picture taken with a panda, and the same shit happened here too with people looking right through Chooch like he didn’t exist and shoving their way in for a photo op so they can show all their lame friends how “cool” and “edgy” they are for getting their photo taken with a furry. Chooch kept turning around and giving me this scary firestarter look and I was half-tempted to let him go off, but instead I gave him a gentle (GENTLE!!) shove toward the panda and loudly said, “YOU’RE NEXT.” You gotta be aggressive if you want a picture with a fucking panda, apparently.

I’m not scared of furries like some people are, but the panda admittedly skeeved me out. He reminded me of a panda version of Killer Klowns from Outer Space and I felt fearful in his presence.

After the panda incident, I had my fill and wanted to go home, but Chooch spotted a small horde of furries approaching from another street. So we had to stand around and wait for them to arrive. “This little guy is a big fan!” a plain-clothed furry* laughed to the group of animals, watching Chooch jump excitedly in anticipation.

*(I don’t know what else to call him! He wasn’t in his furry-regalia but had the Anthrocon badge around his neck.)

“You and your foxes,” I sighed afterward.

“Only one was a fox!” Chooch corrected me. And now that I look back at the picture, they don’t look like anything I recognize, really.

I mean, what is this supposed to be? A badger?! Who knows!

Get it? Happy FURth of July?? I love how welcoming most downtown establishments are to the furries.

People are in such a good, festive mood during this time, that some dude from Pizza Parma even bought Chooch ice cream for no reason other than OMG FURRIES ARE HERE! GIDDY-TIME!!

Chooch and I were still so strung-out by the time we got off the trolley, that Henry wouldn’t even walk home with us. Especially after Chooch and I started mocking the laughter of some guy that walked past us:

I hope Anthrocon keeps Pittsburgh as their official headquarters!