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!

The day I left for vacation, one of my Gerber daisies perished. Amber1 left me a distraught message about it on Facebook and said she wasn’t sure if it was Rhoda or VOLTRON, but that she felt really bad. Amber2 suggested it was due to stress since I had relocated their pot behind Gayle before I left, so that they wouldn’t have to be alone.

When I came back to work yesterday, it was sad seeing the empty stem that was once Rhoda, but I was pleased to see that VOLTRON survived in my absence.

UNTIL TODAY.

As soon as I got to work, I noticed that he was wilting, almost in mourning posture and it made my heart break. I watered him, thinking maybe he was thirsty? I don’t know!! I’m new at parenting plants. Well, apparently watering him exacerbated the situation, and by late afternoon, he had bowed even lower.

Nate came to offer his assistance, and together we fashioned a splint out of a plastic knife.

However, I think this might have made things worse and humiliated poor VOLTRON to boot. Nate, grasping for straws (literally—a straw was his first suggestion when we were about to MacGuyver handicapped accessories but he ended up not being able to find one), even said a little prayer for VOLTRON.

(“dear god, save VOLTRON” is how I think the religious spell went.)

(Jeannie witnessed our awkward gardening experiments and shook her head accordingly. Jeannie hates daisies, pass it on!

)

Alas, VOLTRON bit it by that evening. I tried to adjust his knife-splint and three quarters of his petals fluttered to the ground like really pretty dandruff. Sue stopped by for a consult and confirmed that yes, VOLTRON had expired. She advised me to chop off his head*, so I did. I lopped it off with my fake blood-coated scissors like I was Winona Ryder and he was Gary Oldman’s Dracula.

And then I made a Gerber daisy Glenn to add to the RIP wall. :(

*(New ones might grow? Reanimated daisies?)

Chooch got his hair crafted into Warped Tour-approved follicular fringe this morning and bitched and whined the entire 15 minutes he was there. He kept saying he was “so scared” and Lucia—my stylist since 2004, I love her—was like, “Um, OK. Don’t you like zombies? And you’re afraid of getting your hair cut? Weirdo.”

Afterward, he was like, “Whatever, as long as MOMMY likes it.” Because that child knows what’s up.

I promised him that we could go to the nearby Dunkin’ Donuts afterward, because bribery gets me super far as a mom. On the way back, we had the unfortunate luck of falling into step behind a mom pushing a baby stroller and two younger-than-Chooch boys walking next to her. They took up approximately three quarters of the sidewalk and walked slower than a hoarder at the flea market. Had we crossed the street a half second sooner, we’d have managed to cut in front of them.

You may have not ever seen me walk in real life, but please believe that I walk fast and with purpose, without actually ever having any purpose but no one needs to know that. Keep pretending like I am walking to my high-powered job on Wall Street.

I kept trying to skirt around these sidewalk hogs, but Chooch wasn’t following my cues so I’d have to fall back behind them again and join Chooch’s quicksand cadence. These staccato little steps. Tiny shuffles. Maddening slowness. I wasn’t in a hurry to be anywhere but I suddenly had this dire need to be home immediately.

But the thing with Chooch, and any kid really, is that he doesn’t quite grasp the need for personal space, so he was right up on these people like he belonged to them which made it look like this poor prematurely gray-haired mom was walking down the street and oh boy, there’s her bastard ducklings, too. God help them if they had stopped abruptly because they’d be stuck wearing Erin and Chooch backpacks.

And then Chooch has to use his megaphone tone to ask me questions about them.

“Why are they walking so slow? Where are they going? They’re seriously walking really slow, right? Aren’t they, Mommy?”

One half second!!

Sensing our uncomfortable closeness, she called over her shoulder, “Feel free to pass me!” Not in a snotty tone, but one that showed she understood my need to walk with enormous strides and not stare at the asses of her meandering children all the way down the street for god only knows how many more blocks.

“OK thanks!” I answered in my best imitation of “cheerful” that I could muster and steered Chooch by the shoulders so that he was on the open side, allowing us to pass them in a singe file line.

But no. This is not what Chooch did. Chooch decided to WALK RIGHT NEXT TO HER like he was her fourth spawn, leaving me alone to follow in their wake, like I’m the pathetic step-kid. I kept thinking about that motherfucking half second.

Totally fucking awkward. 

I kept trying to push him ahead of them without it appearing that I was opening abusing my son, just some fingers in between his shoulderblades, nothing to see here Officer, but Chooch was absolutely not taking the hint. Just kept walking, side-by-side, with this lady, a stroller and  his new brothers. (They did not look like children Chooch would get along with, by the way. All crew-cuts, khakis and Crocs.)

By this point, it had only technically been two blocks, but I felt as though my hair must have been mirroring this lady’s silver strands. One gray hair for every tiny baby step. It felt slow motion was liquefying my flesh, rendering it into some kind of slow poke simple syrup and oozing it into the cracks of the sidewalk, like I was your basic, walking Salvador Dali painting, melting into the permanence of this scene where I would live FOREVER AND EVER OH GOD HELP ME. ONE MOTHERFUCKING HALF SECOND!

After a few blocks of this faux-coziness, the mom paused at a street corner and turned to cross over to the other side of the street.  We needed to continue going straight so I did a little fist pump and began to take exaggerated lunges down the sidewalk as if to illustrate to the West Liberty Avenue traffic just how fast I really can walk.

But then I noticed that Chooch wasn’t with me. Oh, because he was still with his new family, waiting to cross the street with them.

“What the fuck,” I muttered and backtracked to retrieve him.

“I was waiting for my pass,” he cried as I steered him back in the correct direction.

“What pass?” I asked.

“That lady was going to give us a free pass!” Chooch cried. “For Kennywood, probably!”

“She wasn’t giving us a free pass! She said ‘Feel free to pass me,’ you dummy!” And then I laughed, because that’s what good moms do when their kids are being dumb.

And then we somehow managed to walk the remaining three blocks home without incident.

We bought Henry a pink donut at Dunkin’ Donuts just so we could take a picture of him eating a pink donut. Ordering his stupid donut was probably what knocked us ONE HALF SECOND off course. Thanks, Henry.

Chooch and I had been diligently, and sort of clandestinely, working on a Father’s Day book for Henry. Truth be told, we don’t ever really get him anything on Father’s Day, and the whole Annual Father’s Day Kennywood Trip is mostly for me and Chooch. (Maybe more than mostly.) So I decided that it was time to do something to really show Henry who’s boss.

(Hahahaha, as if.)

Chooch and I took turns illustrating things about Henry that we love, and maybe sometimes also things that we like to make fun of him for. Like his constant desire to point out nature things when we go for walks. Or his ability to identify aircraft, sometimes by sound alone. (Just kidding, he’s not that cool.)

Of course, working with a seven-year-old meant that Henry pretty much knew we were “doing something” right from the get-go. Like when Chooch decided to draw his first picture while Henry was in the other room, and “covered up” by yelling, “I’M JUST DRAWING….UM, A RANDOM PICTURE OF A ZOMBIE. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH FATHER’S DAY.”

It arrived last Friday and I diligently wrapped it in wrinkled, used tissue paper, duct tape, and a ribbon made from the circulars because Henry is OBSESSED with reading the circulars. I hate the circulars because they’re nothing more than superfluous clutter, so I tend to pitch them the moment the mailman delivers them, which sends Henry into a blind rage because he enjoys reading about produce sales at the dining room table while he eats his meat-gruel and bread for dinner.

I wanted him to have mixed emotions: happiness about receiving a gift, and anger that his circulars were reduced to little more than gift-fodder.

The idea was to give it to him the morning of Father’s Day, to maybe soften him up for the rest of the day so that he would feel obliged to spend thousands of dollars on us at Kennywood (maybe I might want to buy a piece of a carousel or a bag of synthetic drugs from some teenaged employee in the arcade, you never know), but we caved the following morning and gave it to him a week early. Besides, it was two days after his birthday, so it was kind of like a duel present.

He didn’t actually cry, but he did have to remove his glasses in order to read it because he’s old.

The Frown Page is the favorite here at work.

Seriously though, Trashcan cookies from Sheetz are the bomb. I don’t know why he doesn’t take it into the bathroom to eat it in privacy.

Chooch wanted to draw Henry nude in every illustration. This was the only one where it made sense though. I mean, I don’t think Henry has ever stood on top of a hill, playing Candy Crush in the nude, while Chooch rides his scooter. I hope not, anyway.

There was even a page of Henry Haikus that some of my friends submitted, which really made it even better. I liked that so many people were involved, and I think he was pretty honored. I wanted to do something more for him other than just throw some pictures in a book and call it a day, I guess because he deserves the extra effort — ugh I can’t believe I’m letting my fingers type those words.

Of course, every time I don’t get my way now, I throw The Book back in his face. It’s almost as good as using the Bible against a Christian.

If you have any interest in seeing the rest of the book, here is a slideshow. I know, right — a SLIDESHOW. This blog just keeps getting richer and richer.

Click here to view this photo book larger