#27: 50 Cent Catch.

Took this at Brown’s Country Kitchen after I almost died at the county fair, which I think I’m finally ready to write about, haha. Tomorrow, maybe.

#28: Henry Hates Pigtails.

#29: Obligatory B&W

#30: DONEZO!!

Hey, Face, it’s been real. But let’s give the Internet a break for awhile!

But first, one more thing: My friend Heidi was kind enough to include some of my photos in a blog post she wrote today about the art of self portraiture. She’s awesome and you should go and check it out if you’re feeling particularly read-y right now.

K, bye.

I can’t believe I’m standing in line….

…to see a flower….

…at 11:00 o’clock on a Tuesday night.

Janna and I were dying because this girl was BOOKING IT down the sidewalk, she was THAT excited. That’s probably the fastest she’s ever ran in her whole life.

But that’s exactly what I was doing, thanks to my boss sending me an email last week about the Corpse Flower, which was due to blossom any day at Phipps Conservatory. This was a big deal because these flowers only bloom once every 6-10 years and when they do, it only lasts for a day or two. My boss thought I would be interested for two reasons:

1. When in bloom, it’s supposed to give off a stench similar to a rotting corpse;
2. Because of its power to wake the dead, Phipps lovingly named it Romero, after George Romero.

[Sidebar: I hope you know who George Romero is, but just in case you don’t, he is the mastermind behind the zombie classic Night of the Living Dead. Plus, he hails from Pittsburgh, which is why we are the Zombie Capital of the World, I don’t give a shit what any other city tries to say. COME AT ME, BRO.]

Originally, the flower was supposed to bloom over the weekend, but I ended up being unable to make it. Then Tuesday evening, my boss forwarded me this frantic-sounding “THE CORPSE FLOWER HAS BLOOMED!!!” email which she received from Phipps. They even extended their hours to 2AM that night and the next. I felt like I had to go and experience it at this point, like I was going to be a departmental failure if I passed it up. So I texted Janna and she was like, “Yes, I will go inhale a stinky flower with you.” It was around 10PM by the time we arrived, and the place was PACKED. I had to drive around for awhile before we finally found a parking space. At 10PM on a Tuesday! ALL OF THIS OVER A GODDAMN FLOWER! WTF was I thinking.

Surprisingly though, it only took about 5 minutes once we got inside before we acquired our admission and we were on our way up the curving staircase, which seemed remarkably less crowded than it had right when we walked in. I felt hope.

Then when we entered the main conservatory area, the corpse flower was pretty RIGHTTHERE. I nudged Janna and said, “Shucks, that wasn’t so bad at all!

” Because you all can imagine me saying an endearing word like shucks.

Turns out though that there was a line that wound all the way around that side of the conservatory, through at least three separate rooms, before snaking back around and passing through all of those rooms once again.

It was a line full of college students, hipsters (because this was the “in” thing to be doing in Pittsburgh, you guys. I’m surprised Pitchfork didn’t write a review), giddy botany-geeks, and people who are just generally wet for flowers, I guess. A guy behind us was wearing a Chiodos shirt, so even My People were there! Then I saw my geology professor from Pitt run past us, his face practically droopy and glazed over with excitement, and I just totally lost it.

“What the fuck are we doing here?!” I laughed for the 87th time; Janna responded with the “This Was Your Idea” staredown.

The upside was that at least we had a ton of shit to look at while we were in line. Plus, I hadn’t been to Phipps since 2007 and I’m pretty sure I spent most of the time making fun of people instead of looking at leaves, so it was pretty much all new to me.

Each area is peppered with various art installations, so that kept it interesting for people like me who don’t care about learning the Latin name for orchids. In one room it’s rectangular pillars of stained glass which revolve slowly and depict different Pittsburgh landmarks and neighborhoods. The couple in front of us asked one of the docents a question about the stained glass and she, in a very uncertain tone similar to the one I use constantly at work, replied hesitantly, “Um, I think all of the scenes are like, the artist’s favorite places,” and then when they asked the name of the artist, she was like, “Um, I’m not sure. But you can find it on one of the placards, I think.”

“She’s basically the Erin Kelly of docents,” I whispered to Janna, and oh how we laughed.

Maybe she was only versed in Corpse Flower 101 and now these nerdy flower people are asking her questions about art, can you imagine.

They should have just asked this broad instead. She was wearing an “Ask Me!” pin and you could tell she was chomping at the bit to teach people naughty bits about flora. In fact, I avoided eye contact because I was afraid she was going to make me talk to her.

Surprisingly, there were zero assholes in line with us! Turns out though that this was only because the corpse flower was too far away still. Things changed once we got up there and everyone turned into motherfucking paparazzi.

I emailed this picture to Chooch while we were standing in line. His reply was, “You idiot, you know I hate butterflies!” WHY DO YOU THINK I SENT THIS, CHOOCH. God, he’s so slow sometimes. I kind of wish I had brought him just so I could have shoved him into the butterfly garden.

That’ll probably be the first horror movie he writes.

I don’t know what this is, but the cool college girls in front of us were taking pictures of it and I am a follower. When Janna started analyzing it (“It looks like hands coming out”), I knew we had officially been standing in line for too long. Plus, I was yawning every 10 seconds, which was embarrassing because the cool college girls were probably thinking, “Aw, this poor woman. She probably had a long day at home being a housewife and now she’s here standing in line not understanding art and nature when she should be home darning her husband’s socks. He is surely the breadwinner of the household.”

And then one of the other girls, who earlier didn’t want to give anything away about this amazing(ly boring) art house film she had recently watched, probably suggested, “I bet she is just holding a spot in line for her husband.”

Sorry, I don’t know where this is coming from. But coincidentally, I’m sitting at my desk yawning just thinking about the Great, Long Standing.

“Is it amazing? Of corpse it is!” Oh, Phipps. You punny, you punny.

The closer we got, the more the giddiness inside my belly began to build to a crescendo, and for a moment I forgot I was in line to see a flower. It was the same sensation I get when I’m about to meet a band or get on a roller coaster for the first time! Excitement is contagious, and this damn flower was certainly causing enough of it.

We were still an entire room away when the stench began wafting over, completely overpowering every other odor in that place. Someone could have farted, a big juicy Silent But Deadly, and it probably would have gone undetected. Because the stench of rot was in the air and it was dead set on building an olfactory monopoly. One by one, people started overeacting, covering their faces, dry-heaving, gagging.

“IT SMELLS SO BAD!” rang out like a round of Row Row Row Your Boat.

And well, that would probably be my review if I blogged with a word limit.

Ye Ol’ Corpse Flower, standing at [xx] feet. Three feet maybe? I didn’t measure. Nor did I actually read any of the literature while in line. But it looked pretty solid and tall for a flower.YOU CAN QUOTE ME ON THAT.

Some broad was standing on guard, only allowing about 15-20 people in front of the corpse flower at a time. This is when shit got cray. People were being so goddamn pushy, everyone wanted to take 45 selfies to post on Instagram (ME AND THE CORPSE FLOWER, WHATTTTT #corpseflower #meandthecorpseflower #corpseflower4lyfe #smellslikeshit #omfg #peeyew #instagramflowerhoes #caniget500likes), and then there were the fauxtographers who needed a shot FROM.EVERY.ANGLE. Newsflash guys! Search “corpse flower” on Instagram and literally every picture looks like the one above.

Snap a photo, take a whiff, move on!

It took me a hot while jsut to get this generic shot because elbows kept jutting out as losers were prancing around with their fancy DSLRs like they had Kate Upton spread eagle before them, and not some phallic flower emitting rancid notes of rotten meat, poop and Chooch’s feet.

 (The toe-curling bouquet of which was surpringly non-existent once we stood in front of the flower, go figure.)

Janna and I finally managed to shirk past all of the idiots clumping together for “group photos, OMG!!” to take our obligatory snaps and get the hell out of there.

The best part was actually getting to explore the rest of the grounds. It was only a little after 11PM by the time we made it past Romero, so we definitely had time to look around while Phipps remained open. It seemed like most people bolted once their photo op ended, so the rest of the place was dead. There was something really fun about walking around there at night, pretending to give a shit about flowers and leaves, oohing at the bonsai garden and then hurriedly putting on our “respectful” faces every time a Phipps worker would pop out to make sure we weren’t shitting in bushes.

Afterward, we hung out in the cafe, where I bought the most disgusting drink this side of Kambucha. It was a cantoulope refresher, which I’m sorry but that sounded really refreshing! So I ordered one and newsflash: it was unsweetened and tasted like how the corpse flower smelled. I was so disappointed and whined about it a lot. Janna had a pineapple version and she tried to act like hers was just as gross, but it totally wasn’t so nice try there, Janna!

I bought a commemorative shirt with this same design on it, I couldn’t help it. I was actually kind of glad that I got to experience this! It made me feel like I was part of the community or something. I’m just not sure what community exactly.

****

The next day at work, I was telling Wendy and Sue about it. “Did it really smell like a corpse?” Sue asked.

I started to say yes, but then admitted that I’ve never actually smelled a corpse, so who knows.

“That’s a good thing to know about my employee,” Sue sighed and retreated to her office, but I think she was actually shocked that sniffing dead bodies isn’t what I do when I leave here.

****

And that’s the story about how I stayed out until after midnight and didn’t even come home drunk or shoeless. God, I’m so lame.

Been a little disjointed this week, not really in a bad way, just in a jumbled-thought kind of way. So today’s blog post is going to be all bullets, bay-buh. (Somewhere in California, Andrea is rejoicing with pee-vials in hand. She’s a sucker for bulletpoints, so if you want to woo her, send her some bulletpointed love poetry.)

• I’ve been getting so amped for autumn, you guys! I was just sitting here at my desk when I had a random flashforward to October and I got the giddiest twinge in my gut. PIE PARTY! HAUNTED HOUSES! PUMPKIN-FLAVORED PIGOUTS! HALLLLLLLOWWWWWWWEEEEEEENNNNNN!! Here I was, being all sad about summer’s upcoming demise when I shouldn’t be sad at all because fall fucking rules the world. (Sucks that shit-assed winter follows it though.)
• This weekend, Henry, Chooch and I will be working on oversized paper mache versions of our faces for a family portrait I would like to potentially do. I already agreed that Chooch’s can be a cat face, what the fuck do I care anymore. Cat it up, kid. Cat. It. Up.
• When I was little, my grandma’s friend, Jean Arseneaux, used to buy me purses and stuff them with all sorts of trinkets, Tinkerbell nailpolish, Bonne Bell bullshit. I loved opening up all of the compartments and finding tissue paper-swaddled presents tucked away. Unfortunately, this really spoiled me and made me expect ALL PURSES to come stuffed with presents. I’m telling you this because the other day, a gigantic box arrived from Andrea, full of birthday presents for me! A framed clown picture, makeup, jewelry, a mixtape wallet—it was like the neverending present! Kind of like Mary Poppins tapestry bag, which makes sense because Andrea is the Goth Mary Poppins, after all. She even included a bobcat puppet for Chooch, because he’s spoiled too. Chooch made me name him, so Bobcat’s name is Butt. This is basically a lot of words to say thank you to Andrea for making me feel like a 7-year-old again!
• I’m beginning to think I’ll never be able to do real push-ups.
• My co-worker Cheryl wants to have an employee of the week feature on our department’s wiki page and volunteered me to take candid pictures of everyone, so now Glenn is basically all clenched-up, wondering what I have planned for him. As expected, approximately 99% of the department hates this plan.
• I guess our baseball team has been doing really good. (Our baseball team is the PIRATES, for those of you who don’t know I live in PITTSBURGH, which most of the time I’d prefer you to not know, actually.)
• Yesterday, Chooch and I were driving to pick up Henry’s mom. We started talking about how he goes back to school on Monday and I was like, “You’re going to have so much to tell everyone!” He thought about it and then said, “Yeah, but we did so many fun things that it’s hard to even remember it all.” To which I responded, “And THAT is why I blog.” You could almost see the lightbulb go on as he finally understood why I do this shit.
  • Which brings me to my next thought turd: This summer has kicked my blogging ass. I mean, I’m glad that I was able to document all the cool shit we did, but my brain is like, “Please don’t make me” every time I open up WordPress now. I have been doing this for 12 years, can you believe it? 12 motherfucking years. When does it end? I mean, I guess I could just stop and it’s not like my life would end. I think about it a lot. I enjoy blogging, but I miss writing and I really don’t think this is “writing” anymore. Most of the time I’m blogging from my fucking phone. What is discipline?! I don’t feel like I have it anymore. I remember back to my LiveJournal days when I was pretty much OCD about proof-reading every last entry before posting, and then I would read it 3 more times. Now, I never proofread! And when I do, it’s 6 months later. I’m a blogging slob, you guys, but I KNOW YOU WOULDN’T HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY.
• Henry’s mom and Chooch have been fighting with each other every day. Like really, what could they possible have to argue about!? It’s probably best that we don’t know. But then it made me fight with Henry last night becaue he made some remark about how Chooch has inherited my “psycho laugh” that involuntarily rises up from my body seconds before I rage-break things around the house, so I was all, “OH I SEE IT’S MY FAULT THAT YOUR MOM DOESN’T GET ALONG WITH OUR SON” and then I put myself to bed at 9:30 because that’s what tired cry-babies do, you know. They go to bed early like it’s actually going to hurt anyone else. Henry was probably like, “Yay, now I can watch CSI.” I hate when Henry makes it sound like Chooch and I are such terrible little monsters! So what if we are?! It’s probably because ANDREA SPOILS US!
• Even Marcy has been fighting with Henry’s mom. I know it looks like, “Aw, Marcy wants to be close to her grandma!” But really it’s, “Marcy needs to sit close to her enemies at all times.” Sometimes, Judy will flip a page in Us Weekly, which angers Marcy. Marcy will hiss at her, to which Judy responds with, “Don’t hiss at me, cat.” This picture was taken right after Judy scolded Marcy, so Marcy repositioned herself so that her back was toward Judy.

• I have been reading “Tell The Wolves I’m Home” by Carol Rifka Brunt. It is really good, but also very sad. You have just read a book review by Erin R. Kelly. (I mostly only read it on the trolley because I don’t have much spare time these days. Oh, and I also read some last night when I put myself to bed at 9:30. Take that, Henry, you motherfucker.)
• SOMEONE STOLE MY LEAN CUISINE AT WORK THE OTHER NIGHT, YOU GUYS! I have never felt more betrayed. I still haven’t figured out who did it (GLENN, PROBABLY) but no one is taking my Smart Ones today, that’s for sure. I labeled it as poison. (My first choice was to wrap it in barbed wire, but I must have used all of my stock the last time I reenacted scenes from Suspiria.) Anyway, you can imagine how overly dramatized I made this situation, like I was the first person in the history of offices to have their food thieved. Amber1 and Bridget tried to offer me some snacks they had at their desk, but accepting would have meant I couldn’t sulk and carry on at such a grand scale, so I said NO and went back to walking around with my arm slung across my forehead. I hope whoever dined on shitty Lean Cuisine that night took pleasure in knowing they stole it from the most helpless person in the department.
  • I guess this is karma from all those years I spent stealing candy at MSA.
• I haven’t done a giveaway thingie in a long while. WHO WANTS A GIVEAWAY!? Maybe I’ll have Chooch paint a cat for one lucky winner, who even knows. One of Henry’s old bandannas? Wacky Worm shirt? I want to make this blog happenin’ again and, besides actually putting some “quality” into what I post, this is the best I can do right now!  (Wait…was this joint ever happenin’? I’m picturing you guys dressed for a sock hop now.)
• Henry made a crucial error Sunday night by leaving his phone unattended. I’m pissed that I wasted valuable time sending a tweet to his 8 followers about how he just farted and it was awful, when I should have been asking me to marry him on Facebook. I’m losing my touch. He came downstairs just in time though, because Chooch was going to text Henry’s boss. That would have been interesting, as we’re standing in line at a soup kitchen.
• Chooch was talking about Warped Tour and mused, “I really like We Came As Romans and bands that scream, but I also like the peaceful stuff, too.” It’s good to be diverse, young child!
• There was an ice cream social at work today, except that it was forzen yogurt. I didn’t go because I don’t have time to be social. J/K. I didn’t want to be tempted. I save my ice cream consumption for the weekend. In fact, I’m already looking for a new ice cream place to try! I AM SO EXCITED! This is what happens when you’re pathetic—little things make you giddy. I’m OK with this.
• Chooch told us the other day that he is apparently terrified of butterflies. Ok…”I hate how they pop out of nowhere and fly into my face!” he cried. Where the fuck is this happening to my child? In Minecraft? Because the last time I checked, we don’t walk through any butterfly gardens in Brookline. Of all the things for Hardcore Chooch to fear: pwetty buttelfwies. Awww.
• Janna and I went to see a flower that smells like a rotting corpse and now I feel like I’m smelling it everywhere.
• I’m still on a borderline-stalkerish Eisley kick. I follow every last one of them on Instagram and every time Henry hears a baby crying or laughing on my phone, he sighs and asks, “Which Eisley baby is that, now?” (In case you don’t know anything about Eisley, the band is made up of three sisters, their brother, and a cousin. All three sisters and the brother’s wife were pregnant at the same time and now they all have the cutest fucking babies ever and post Instagram videos of them being cute fucking babies and it is nearly enough to make me want to have a baby. I’m not even joking. The other day I was looking at a picture that the girlfriend of the youngest brother (who is not in Eisley, but he and the youngest sister have their own band called Merriment CAN YOU EVEN STAND IT) posted and, as if this was some grand revelation, said out loud to no one and everyone, “I feel like I’m more obsessed with the DuPrees as people than I am with their music.” Henry was just like, “Yeah, no shit.” (Sherri replied to me TWICE on Instagram and I was like, “OMFG I WILL NEVER WASH MY INSTAGRAM AGAIN!” Which is definitely what Marsha Brady would have cried if Davy Jones had replied to her on Instagram.) Anyway, I guess I like “peaceful stuff” too sometimes, just like Chooch. (See below for: “peaceful music”)

• In TV news: there isn’t a single person on So You Think You Can Dance that I care to see win. Dexter is making me feel “meh” and I never, ever use the word “meh.” I miss Teen Wolf and The Killing so much already. I want to fight 75% of the girls on The Challenge, even Diem. (The only ones I like, really, are Emily and Cooke. Jemmye is not too bad but she’s hard to look at. I’d still bang CT though.) I can’t think of anything else that I watch. Oh, Master Chef. (Fuck that Philly bitch, Krissy, though. Someone give her some linguisitics lessons, please.) Oh wait, Pretty Little Liars, too! But I never know what’s going on with that one and always have to ask Henry, “What’s going on?”
• Chooch wants to go to Tonga because he watched some program with Judy about some Tongan axe murderer. “Just like Lizzie Borden,” Chooch explained with a casual shrug.
• God bless those of you who still read this shit. I mean, for Christ’s sake. What is going on with this blog anymore.

I decided Friday night that I wanted to have a picnic at some point over the weekend. This is the process at my house:

• I decide on something
• I tell Henry the thing that I have decided upon
• Henry does everything that he needs to do to make the decision turn into a tangible thing, whether he wants to or not

What I decided was that the picnic would happen on Sunday at Buttermilk Falls, which is a quaint little nature-y thing in Beaver Falls, PA. It’s been a few years since we last pilgrimaged out that way and I thought maybe this time Chooch would be old enough to appreciate it more. And appreciate it, he did. He kept calling it “Paradise Falls” and couldn’t stop gushing about how it was the best place in the world, and I was like, “Wow, this kid has some low standards.” I mean, it’s nice there, sure. But it’s just this tiny waterfall-thing with a very small plot of land upon which to picnic if you so desire. But I  kept my mouth shut because it was nice to see that Chooch was actually outside and enjoying it inside of counting down to Minecraft.

We climbed around a little bit along the rocks along the creek before getting our picnic accoutrements out of the car.

The look of delirium. Henry’s nailed it.

So…I got stuck on a rock. I’m notoriously panicky when it comes to climbing things, even low-to-the-ground things, and I was wearing TOMS which aren’t really known for their rock-climbing attributes. Luckily, there happened to be a couple walking by at the exact moment I wailed, “I FEEL LIKE I MIGHT FALL OMG” so the lady said to who I assume was her husband, “Give her your hand!”

Meanwhile, Henry just stood there and frowned while this panned out.

(I guess I should note that really what was going on here is that I didn’t want to get wet.)

This is pretty much what the area looked like when I was OMG STUCK ON A ROCK. So, not really all that scary. (OK, not scary at all. But I’m sure you already knew that.)

Don’t clap for him, Chooch.

So, in the short amount of time I was stuck on a rock, some large family (people-wise, not weight) arrived and usurped our picnic spot. Granted, our shit was still in the car, but what are the odds?! Anytime we’ve ever gone to Buttermilk Falls, we’ve been the only people there, except once when a nearly-nude man was sitting on a rock meditating. Old Erin would have flipped out, but Current Erin was like, “Oh wellz0rz, let’s just sit over here by this tree, far away from those assholes and mock them from a distance.” Plus, after what happened the day before, I was treating everything with a newfound appreciation. More on that later this week. I’m not quite to the point where I can write about it yet.

White Trash Picnic.

Henry had to make a special trip to the grocery store for picnic staples on Sunday morning. Things like bread and cheese and peanut butter and potato salad and apples and pretzels and other snacks—literally NONE of this we already had. You might as well turn Henry into the authorities you guys because obviously he is STARVING me and Chooch. God, Henry. Try taking better care of us.

Anyway, while Henry was busy assembling sandwiches and whatever, I decided to be helpful and suggested that I would walk to the nearby Mexican market in order to procure beverage despite Henry’s persistent dissuading. I made Chooch go with me because I always feel like I’m going to have a nervous breakdown when I go to any sort of market alone.

Inside the Mexican market, Chooch made sure to yell loudly about how badly it “stunk” in there, because that’s his signature move whenever we’re the only Americans in a foreign store.

After spending entirely too much time pacing in front of the drink cooler, I finally settled on a nice cold bottle of Glucosoral because I liked the picture. I called Henry to see what he wanted and he kept insisting the he was “fine” and “good,” didn’t “need anything.” So I chose a bottle of some kind of mottled juice cocktail called Boing. Chooch decided to be boring and went with Gatorade. Then he bought a pack of cookies at my insistence, which made Henry bitch upon our return because “You never like any of the cookies you get at that damn store!”

Anyway, it turns out my selection was basically Pedialyte for grown-ups. Since I wasn’t currently suffering from diarrhea, I didn’t drink it.

“This was FOUR DOLLARS?!” Henry barked when it was his turn to inspect it with his SERVICE eyes. I just shrugged. I don’t look at price tags, usually. I guess $4 is steep for a non-alcoholic beverage. “This is why I don’t like letting you go to stores alone,” Henry mumbled.

I wasn’t alone! Chooch was with me.

Henry couldn’t drink his Boing because it required the help of a bottleopener, which I assumed he didn’t need since he was in the SERVICE. Isn’t that what teeth are for? Couldn’t he have used a sword?

Mexican cookies that Henry and I both predicted Chooch would not like. And he didn’t.

A so-so PB&J* and some awesome bowtie pasta salad with PINE NUTS. Pine nuts should be in (most) everything.

(*I told Henry that all I wanted was a fancy PB&J but then he went to some low-brow grocery store where high quality food is made by Michelina’s, so what I got was a so-so PB&J on super dry bread with gross jelly and plain, non-fancy peanut butter. Thanks for nothing, Henry.)

Although, I will admit, Henry made some sort of lemon mango compote which he spread on top of chocolate waffles, and that was pretty fucking good.

Then we played several rousing rounds of Boggle. Chooch is really good at those games where you’re given a word or a phrase and have to find as many words as possible out of the letters. When we were at dinner with Matt and Kristen in Boston, that was one of the games on the kids menu and literally the first word he found was “retard.” I think that Matt’s favorite part of our visit.

But Chooch is less than stellar at Boggle. I think it’s because he hates the rules. So he eventually quit playing in order to put more effort into the role of timekeeper. He had to use the timer on his (my old) phone, which caused The Bed Intruder song to blast across peaceful Buttermilk Falls.

(Yes, that used to be one of my ring tones on my old phone. I confess.)

I drank a venti iced coffee on the way there, so of course I had to pee almost immediately upon arrival. Unfortunately, the only option was this disgusting, slasher film outhouse.

So we left. I peed in a Sheetz up the street. It was good.

We couldn’t end the weekend without a trip for ice cream. However, we pretty far from Pittsburgh so we had to rely on Yelp to tell us where to go. We wound up at Witch Flavor? which was OK, but didn’t really do it for us. Maybe I’m spoiled, but I’m used to walking into an ice cream parlor and thinking, “OMG I WANT EVERY FLAVOR HOW WILL I CHOOSE?!” But for the first time ever, I was thinking, “I don’t really want any of these flavors, how will I choose?” I wound up with coconut chip. It was OK. Chooch and Henry were “eh” with their choices too.

I think the problem was that I was really craving soft serve. What I wanted was some kind of soft swirl under a crunchy nut/sprinkle armor.

A so-so ice cream cone.

I also was less than impressed with the girl working in the shop. She was kind of shitty and condescending and I really wanted to walk out. Dude, you work in a fucking ice cream parlor. Get stoked.

Afterward, Henry essentially took me what appeared to be Back to School clothes shopping. (I can fit into clothes in the juniors section again!) I guess all that role-playing convinced Henry that he actually is my dad.

And here’s some boring video I made (with Chooch’s help) of our picnic thing:

I was thinking about how many fun ice cream outings we’ve had so far this summer, and it made me remember this one day in 2008 when Blake came out with us and we took pictures and got ice cream at Bill’s Golfland. It was such a good day. BLAKE, WE MISS YOU!!

Ugh, they were both so goddamn young! Chooch was even wearing an age-appropriate t-shirt, what the fuckkkk.

One of my all-time favorite pictures of Chooch.

Summer + ice cream = GOOD MEMORIES.

Yo. On this day of rest, I am going to share some random photos taken during the week. And then I might read a book or something, followed by a brief pouting session when I remember that tomorrow is the start of the last week of summer for Chooch. :(

You can’t tell but this is totally a lemon Rice Krispies treat and, unless you hate lemon, it was a million times better than the classic, which is hereby too plain for me to ever even think about eating again.

This was the exchange between Henry and myself after I told him one of my co-workers was collecting money for the Wounded Warrior Project. Touché, Henry J. Robbins.

This is how I get Henry’s attention.

He was being a dick later on so I told him I take it all back.

“Oh no,” he said drolly. “Please, don’t take back the clouds and lightning. Not the poop!”

I’m going to miss leisurely weekday breakfasts with Chooch, where we explore Brookline like we’re new to town.

We just had breakfast at Eat n Park on Friday and Chooch stopped talking about kitty videos long enough to shit talk the man behind me for not saying “please” to the waitress.

After I almost died at a county fair yesterday, we ate dinner at Brown’s Country Kitchen, which was nothing really to write home about but the walls were plastered with mildly amusing wooden signs which entertained me and Chooch.

Marcy rejected my flowers. :(

Hope everyone’s enjoying the weekend! I’ll be back tomorrow with all kinds of words about Mexican beverages, carnies and other assorted bullshit.

So this is old news by like 5 days, and I know I talk all kinds of smack on Pittsburgh (it’s my hometown, I’m allowed!), but sometimes this city can be so fucking amazing. Currently, one Andy Warhol Bridge (he was from Pittsburgh, in case you didn’t know) has been yarn-bombed and it is just the cutest/funnest/prettiest/coziest fucking thing to walk across right now.

Even better than walking all over Henry, and you KNOW how much fun that is for me.

The Knit the Bridge Project was created by the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh and the result ended up being the grandest example of yarn-bombing in the United States, which is cool in and of itself, but the best part is that once the installation comes down, all of the panels are going to be washed and donated to homeless shelters, nursing homes and animal shelters. If that doesn’t make your heart feel all cozy and swaddled, then seek help, I don’t know.

It was nice to see people taking their time across the bridge and SMILING.

One guy was even singing loudly, that’s how happy the bridge was making him.

(Actually, I think he was under the influence.)

The Law Firm is lurking somewhere in this picture.

Favorite.

I wish it could stay like this forever. You have until September 6th to come out and see it.

(Click here for photos of the actual assemblage!)

#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!