Today is Chooch’s first day of 1st grade at a real school! Good riddance, Catholic bitch-moms*! Goodbye, daily heart palpitations! Sayonara, judgmental glares!

Oh. Sorry. Didn’t mean to make this all about me.

(*This is not directed at all Catholic moms. Even I am technically Catholic. Just the Catholic BITCH-moms from Chooch’s old school.

You know, the ones who follow “God’s Word” SO WELL.

Their example is the reason I consider religion to be a joke.)

Do you know how many kids came to Chooch’s birthday party last year? 4. Because those 4 kids have parents who didn’t hold my blog against Chooch. Almost no one else even RSVPd. Punish the kid for his mom’s sins. That’s awesome.

Chooch was so excited this morning.

He had orientation the other night and is thrilled to be going to a school that, oh I don’t know, looks like a school. And his little buddy from next door is in his class, so his dad suggested that we just alternate walking them both up the street to school. I am so all about that. Any day where I don’t have to put on a bra pre-8:00am is a good day.

No more tuition stress, being looked down upon, and feeling like the heathen outcast. And trust me, that was way before any of the blog drama happened, and I stand by every word I wrote that they so vehemently disagreed with – if you don’t want called out for being a dick, then don’t act like a dick. There’s a thought!

There is really nothing like a good, fresh start.

A few weeks ago, Bridget approached me with a prank proposition. The prank would be aimed at her Work Nemesis, Brad. They used to work together at another place too, so their history is rich with jovial (we think) jabs and ridicule. When Brad first began working at The Law Firm last winter, Bridget made it her job to point out his uncanny resemblance to a Leprechaun (and then proceeded to tell him to watch out, because I like gingers; ONLY JONNY CRAIG! GOD!).

Brad’s office is pretty sparse, save for five empty picture frames. People ask him all the time, “Why do you have blank picture frames in your office, Brad?” I never really listened to his explanation, but it was obvious to me that this was his ploy to suck poor, unsuspecting Law Firm staff into some boring conversation.

I think in Brad’s head, photo-less picture frames = interesting.

Bridget decided that they needed filled with terrible pictures, and she came to the right person because she has a law degree, and is therefore smart. She knows that my sole purpose for breathing is to wreck people’s days with devious shenanigans. Also, it’s pretty well-known that I ain’t got much else going on in life. I already knew that he hated clowns (I interofficed him a picture of John Wayne Gacy as an initiation to The Law Firm), but I needed to know more. Bridget said he hates yogurt and that she once chased him around with some. We also tossed around the idea of filling them with pictures of Brad’s ex-girlfiends, because Bridget is ruthless.

Bridget made me friend him on Facebook so I would have access to his photos. I mean, we all know I’m a creeper, but poring through pictures of Brad at a wedding, Brad with his girlfriend, Brad looking like Tom Hulce from “Amadeus”, Brad at another wedding made me feel super sleazy.

Still, I needed one more picture to make but I had run the clown phobia into the ground by that point; thank god he posted on Facebook last weekend about his crippling fear of horses.

Jackpot.

Of course this also inadvertently became Henry’s burden to bear, since our printer at home is broken so he had to print the final products out at work, which caused several “THESE ARE ALL WRONGGGG!” (completely civil) discussions.

Then came the arduous task of getting him out of his office long enough to fill the frames.

First, Lauren was going to take him to get coffee, but then said, “I already went to get coffee with him this morning; he’s going to think I’m hitting on him!”

Wendy was busy. I asked A-ron yesterday but he changed his mind after he saw how busy Brad was pretending to be. So I went to Chris and said, “Bridget and I need to get Brad out of his office. Please do something.” So then all of a sudden, because CHRIS asked him, A-ron was on board. Barb said she’d help me stuff the frames. Bridget was our look-out.

In the end, I think it took 5 attorneys to get one attorney out of his office.

There’s a joke in there somewhere.

A-ron called Brad and asked him to come to his office, which is only right around the corner, so we knew we had to make this fast. That and the fact that A-ron called me and said, “Make this fast.”

I watched Brad start to walk down the hall, then he changed his mind and went back into his office. However, Barb didn’t see him go back and nearly barged right into his office until she saw me frantically signaling that he was still in there. God, way to go BARB.

(I’ll be kind to Barb and not tell the story of how she completely ruined a prank that Lee set in motion two weeks ago, also involving Brad. But just so you know, SHE COMPLETELY RUINED IT.)

Finally, it was a go. We worked so fast that I bent a nail back AND cut myself on one of the stupid picture frame prongs. (All for you, Bridget!) But it was all worth it when, 10 minutes later, Brad leaned back in his chair and found himself looking straight into Pennywise’s eyes.

I think my favorite part of this whole debacle was when Sean came over to ask me a question at the precise moment Brad left his office for the second time, and I shouted, “I CAN’T. NOT RIGHT NOW!” and almost fell out of my chair on my way to snatch the picture frames. Sean’s face went from surprised to utterly-disgusted in .5 seconds flat, then he retreated with a wave of his hand, like he was physically erasing the whole display.

God, nothing makes me feel more alive than a good prank.

Henry’s reaction to my serious statement that I could survive without him. He reminded me of the time he took a Faygo-related business trip to Detroit for two days (otherwise known as The Dark Period of 2007) and I quickly retracted my statement.

(Then Circa Survive came on and he went back to frowning.)

When making weekend plans with Seri, we tossed around the idea of going to the craft store, maybe a cemetery.

Or!

We could go to Prabhupada’s Palace of Gold in West Virginia, I hinted.

My suggestion was met with a resounding “Yes.” A day at an Appalachian Hare Krishna compound? Who could say no to that?! (Don’t answer that.)

The Palace is located in its own town of New Vrindiban, just outside of Wheeling; it’s reached by a series of seemingly infinite winding country roads, the kinds with curves so sharp it makes you think you’re going to plummet into a gorge if you do anything more than 15 MPH. (In other words, do not drive while receiving BJs on this stretch of asphalt, my friends.) It was farm house, cemetery, church, farm house, cemetery, church, farm house, cemetery, church for 8 miles. But it was OK, because I made a CD full of Chiodos, Circa Survive and Sade especially for this trip.

(You’re welcome, Seri.)

My gas light went on literally right as we passed what would be the last legit gas station for miles and miles; I was a little worried, but for most of the drive we were behind a rusty pick up truck, the bed of which was occupied by a lawn mower and a teenage boy, and I was sure they had a gas can in there somewhere, too. (I mentioned at one point that I thought the kid was pretty hot, and Seri rejected my opinion.) The further along this road we traversed, the more sure I was that we weren’t going to be stumbling upon a gas station any time in the near future and once we broke down, probably all of the men in the pick up truck were going to eschew rescuing us in favor of raping us and making us cook them sloppy joes for the rest of our lives.

Eventually, the curvy country road turned into a pot-holed path coiling through the wooded hillside; we promptly lost service on our phones right after Seri called Pete to see how long we could sustain with the gas light on.

(For the record, he told us we were fine, but I think that’s because he wanted to laugh at us after our ride home to Pittsburgh in the back of Henry’s juice van.)

I decided to defy Pete and turned around in the gravel driveway of someone who certainly had at least two decomposed bodies propped up on milk crates in their basement and was definitely sitting in stretched out underwear on a stained futon, skinning a possum for tonight’s pot roast, and drove back to the first curvy road where we had passed a small, no-name, one-pump gas station.

(You’re welcome, Henry.)

It was the kind of gas station where the overall-clad attendant blows into a ram horn to alert the nearby hill-dwellers that city folk are on their way, get yer slingshots ready and yer inbred dicks lubed.

Except that this gas station accepted credit cards. But that probably just means they’d use a phone instead of the rams horn.

The old lady clerk had to come outside and help me pump my gas, at which point the entire pump started churning and clanging, like there were tiny mountain men inside of it, peddling wooden unicycles to make the gas spurt out of the hose.

I should probably check my bank account at some point to make sure I didn’t get overcharged so some West Virginian gas shanty could buy a new sign for the shop.

Or, you know, a sign.

We headed back to the curvier, hillbillier of the two roads. This time it was four miles of trailer, forest , abandoned house, trailer, forest, abandon—OMG DEER!

, pot hole, trailer. (Roadkill is implied.) We were basically writing Tobe Hooper’s next movie for him.

(You’re welcome, Tobe Hooper.)

(Please get Elizabeth Olsen to play me.)

One last curve in the road and there it was, the Palace of Gold. We entered a door at the far end of some strange wall that looked like it belonged on a Spanish villa, not some Taj Mahal knock-off, and crunched across the long gravel walkway until we reached the steps to the palace.

And that was our first indication that the palace, while a gilded architectural fairy tale from the road, was actually in quite a state of disrepair.

“Nice moccasins,” said everyone in Williamsburg.

I may have posted this before but I just found it on my LiveJournal yesterday and died at how similarly dramatic Chooch and I are.

Case in point, Henry abandoned us today to help our friends at Castle Blood, and you would have thought he told us he was leaving for a job in Alaska.

Then Chooch and I were bickering when Henry was on his way out the door.

“She won’t play with me!” Chooch wailed to Henry.

“Yeah, because he’s being a dick!

” I cried in defense.

Henry just stood there, assessing the situation with a disappointed look, and said, “Jesus Christ, it’s like I’m leaving two ten-year-olds.

”

WHAT? WHY DOES CHOOCH GET TO BE OLDER?!

Anyway, the day quickly unraveled, but that’s a post for another day. (Like, tomorrow.)

Kids at a creepy/rockabilly/steampunk car show.

Went to the Creeprod Car Show yesterday in Lawrenceville, which was spearheaded by the brain trust that is Trundle Manor. Pete and Seri came with us, so we had a combined set of three boys under the age of 7, and this event was decidedly not kid friendly so I don’t know what I was thinking. All three of them got screamed at by some fat slob when they came within a foot of his car; for someone who was so protective of it, he sure was REALLY FUCKING FAR AWAY, drinking his brewski and slurring Yinzer-slang with his buddies clear on the other side of the fence.

This happened kind of early on, and it made me mentally check out.

Gayle had a booth there, right across from a guy selling lamps made out of animal bones and right next to our old neighbor, 1950s HOMEMAKER OMG I FORGOT ABOUT THAT BITCH. (*She is mentioned at the end of the post I linked to.) Now I know what she was sewing all those times I was washing dishes and saw her from the kitchen window sitting behind a sewing machine: really stupid 1950s HOMEMAKER aprons.

I took refuge under Gayle’s tent and talked to her for awhile and got to meet her fiance, Jeff, who was very nice. At least they didn’t yell at the kids.

All Chooch cared about was that there was sticker inside this car (Trixie, the official ride of Mr. ARM and Velda Von Minx) of a naked broad.

Henry’s Blue Collar Gang sign? I have no idea. I think he was actually counting nickels with which to buy a soda pop. And Pete? He was quietly bartering with the Parenting Overlords to just take the rest of his will to live and be done with it.

Ugh. God only knows.

Drooooool.

Really, what stands out the most to me when I think about yesterday was when Chooch was petting someone’s dog and said to the owner, “My mommy had a cat, her name was Speck, and she used to give my mommy high fives.”

Broke my goddamn heart. It was all I could do not to burst into tears right there on the street, mere feet away from a dancing rockabilly crackhead.

Chooch was actually kind of moderately good, until he became obsessed with being thirsty. God, isn’t it enough I grew the kid? Now I have to replenish his fluids too? Parenting is so hard.

Post-car show Wendy’s with a trio of monsters. I’m not a big fast food person (just a regular big person), but I had an oatmeal raisin bar thing that was just delightful.

Yesterday was just plain weird, and not in the good, typical Erin-way.

Can you believe I went to an amusement park and have very little to say about it? It’s not even that I didn’t enjoy myself at Waldameer last weekend, but I think it’s because I tried to be “smart” by taking some preventative Dramamine even though I have never really had a need for such measures. Sure, as I get older, I have to space the spinny rides; no more jumping off and getting right back on the Tilt-a-Whirl. And sometimes I might have to have an extended stay on a bench while I try to kick the cold sweats. But my motion sickness has never been so bad that I couldn’t ride something.

But still, I took some fucking Dramamine and it proceeded to completely ruin my day. I was so tired and irritable, it was unbelievable. And when I went on the Ali Baba, after harassing Chooch until he finally broke down and rode it with me, I spent the whole ride swallowing bile. Chooch, on the other hand, ended up loving it.

The main reason I wanted to go to Waldameer was to ride through the Whacky Shack. I love dark rides more than roller coasters, and this one didn’t disappoint. It was like being transported back to the ’60s with all the psychedelia and old school drug store Halloween props. I loved it so much. And I should note that the line for this ride, by mid-afternoon, was longer than the lines for the two wooden coasters. Erie peeps know what’s up.

I think this was my favorite part. As we rode through each door, the sound of a beating heart played above us.

I wanted to live there! Look how stupid Henry looks.

Stupid Henry looks stupid.

Across from the Whacky Shack was another dark ride called Pirate’s Cove. It was a walk-thru and had the unmistakable dank stench of your Aunt Martha’s basement. Oh, it was like getting a whiff of my childhood and I loved it! During one part that had us walking through a serpentined queue in a black-lit slanted room, I said that I thought it felt familiar to me.

“Yeah, because the Noah’s Ark at Kennywood used to have a room like this,” Henry said ruefully. I can’t believe that it’s been so long since stupid Kennywood desecrated the best dark ride in the world that I couldn’t even remember that. In fact, so many parts of the Pirate’s Cove seemed similar after that realization, that we wondered if the two were made by the same company.

(Here is an article not written by this hack about Noah’s Ark .)

Oh God, don’t I wish.

I kept seeing signs for French waffles, which sounded absolutely delightful, because I like waffles and I also like French.

French vanilla.

French kissing.

French prosthetics.

French porn.

French dressing.

French furries.

French furries filming salad dressing porn.

Then I did that thing where I get all pouty and spoiled-bratty when I say I’m hungry and Henry has the nerve to ask me what I want when he should KNOW WHAT I WANT since I’ve done nothing but say things like, “I wonder what the fuck a French waffle is?” all goddamn day. Fuck!

So I finally got my damn French waffle with a generous coating of powdered sugar.

“Go sit down and eat that,” Henry said patronizingly, and just to be a walking Fuck You! montage, I thrust the waffle to my mouth and bit down faster than I could realize that the waffle wasn’t actually as soft and doughy as I imagined, but crisp and thin and the pressure of my aggressive mastication presented quite a pickle when it caused the other end of the fake breakfast staple to flip up and smack me in the mouth, sending puffs of powdered sugar ALL OVER MY FACE, HAIR AND CLOTHING.

There was that incredibly awkward moment where it felt like everyone inside Waldameer had stopped dead in their tracks and were mocking me along with the entire country of France.

“I told you to sit the fuck down before eating that,” Henry sighed. “Good for you.”

It totally wasn’t even worth it and I started whining about how I should have just stuck with funnel cake and no, I can’t just go ahead and get some funnel cake because I’m too fat, how dare you, Henry.

If you happen to walk past my house and hear me mercilessly heckling all of the French athletes in every Olympic event, know it’s perpetuated by a waffle.

Henry broke his “no spinny rides” policy to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl and acted like a goddamn hero about it for the rest of the day. OK, Henry. We get it. You were in the SERVICE and can withstand a slight brain scrambling. Jesus Christ.

(Speaking of Henry being in the SERVICE, I was watching the Olympics the other night which is basically all I do now—be thankful if you don’t follow me on Twitter—and it taught me that the invasion of Grenada was real & not just some SERVICE story that Henry made up to look cool.)

(Speaking some more of Henry being in the SERVICE, I’m trying to get him to find his dog tags so I can wear them ironically.)

Chooch rode the bumper cars with Henry, so he had a successful experience this time and will probably never ever want to ride with his asshole mom again.

Oh, yeah! Speaking of not wanting to ride with his asshole mom, when we were in line for the most boring wooden roller coaster of all time (the Comet), Chooch was very vocal about how he wanted to ride with DADDY, not MOMMY and he kept saying it over and over again to the point where I was sure all the people around us were beginning to interpret that as, “I don’t want to ride with Mommy because her heroin needle always pokes me when I sit too close.”

Just utterly embarrassing.

So when it was our turn, I ran all the way to the front seat figuring that if Chooch really wanted to ride in the front like he kept saying, he would have no choice but to sit with Dreaded MOMMY. But that little shit was like, “Oh. No thanks then. I guess I’ll just sit in the SECOND SEAT with Daddy.”

What a jerk. AND ON MY BIRTHDAY WEEKEND! (Don’t worry, I said that at least 87 times that day.)

There was another coaster there called Ravine Flyer which was made from some of the most active ingredients in evil. I rode it alone because Chooch wasn’t tall enough, and I was super anxious because there was a sign there that said something about all single riders congregating to the middle and finding other lone riders to pair up with, like some strange roller coaster singles mixer, and what if I couldn’t find some other pathetic single rider? As luck would have it, there was some older man a few people behind me, so we ended up standing together in one of the queues.

But then, when the next coaster pulled up, I got into the far right seat and he didn’t get on after me! I was so offended that this piece of shit stranger didn’t want to ride with me. I know I’m Chubs City, but I don’t have fucking lesions, for Christ’s sake.

What a fucker.

And that roller coaster ended up being a major son of a bitch, so it would have been nice to have had a warm, fat body next to me to hold on to, that’s all I’m saying, asshole.

Really, that coaster was terrible. It might have been the roughest, fastest ride I took on wood, and yes I meant it that way. I didn’t even scream or put my arms up — I just sat there in my seat, completely stunned.

When Henry and Chooch were in line for the Whacky Shack, I got a text from Henry that said, “Jonny’s strung out near the entrance.” I almost died when I saw this guy, because he does kind of look like The Jonny Craig DelGrosso’s Doppelganger. Oh Jonny Craig, how you haunt me everywhere I go.

Then we stood in line to get lemonade behind some dumb bitch who apparently ordered an extra-colossal lemonade for an entire Girl Scout Troop, I don’t fucking know, but it seemed like the poor apathetic Waldameer kids in the little refreshment oven just kept churning out one giant cup after another, like Groundhog Day Part 2: Perpetual Refreshments. I kept thinking, “Why are we still standing in this line?” but I was too Dramamined to do anything about it.

Well, would you look at that. I guess I had things to write about Waldameer after all.

That is all.

Oh, Ross. If you only knew.

****
EDIT! Just learned that Henry didn’t get Ross’s “I’ll be wearing a blue polo” email until after the fact, so he proceeded to approach every man in the CVS parking lot, asking, “Are you waiting for a phone?” like it was code for “Are you selling blow jobs?” Meanwhile, Chooch was laughing at Henry’s awkwardness and then when they finally found Ross, Chooch was sure to tell him how annoying his phone was.

God, I wish I had been there. I like blue polos.

Chooch came barreling into the house yesterday, having just come home from the grocery store with Henry.

“MOMMY! DADDY FOUND SOMEONE’S PHONE ON THE ROAD AND HE GOT OUT OF THE VAN TO GET IT!” Chooch blurted out in one quick breath.

“Jesus Christ,” Henry muttered, coming in the door after him. “Why do you have to announce every single thing I do?” I think Henry expected me to be all apathetic about this turn of events, just like he was, but instead I got all excited and screamed, “OMG let me see it!”

“It’s just a Blackberry!” Henry barked, shouldering past me as I tried to snatch it from him. “God!”

The owner’s contact info was on the home screen, so Henry said he was just going to email him (his name is ROSS) and let him know he has it.

“OK, but let me think about this first. We should make it into some kind of fucked up, psychological mind game,” I murmured, mind reeling. “Kind of like ‘Saw’…” But before I could tell Henry to demand that Ross send us one of his teeth (or at least a nude), Henry had already sent him a Normal Person email reassuring him that his precious phone was not in danger. Goddammit! There were so many different ways this could have gone.

The rest of the evening was interspersed with me asking, “Did he reply to your email yet? How about how? Now? Or now? Here, let me email him—”

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like fate. I looked up the Blackberry owner on Facebook and went into full-blown Cinderella Story mode. I became convinced that Henry was meant to find this phone so I CAN FINALLY HAVE A HUSBAND YOU GUYS OMG. And then I saw that Ross went to school for mechanical engineering so surely that must mean he has a better job than Henry. However, the only activity he had listed on Facebook was fishing, and his profile picture was him holding a gigantic fish, which is really gross to me, and I couldn’t really see his face because of the giant fish carcass, but that’s OK because it made it easier for me to imagine he looks like Ryan Lochte.

And then I woke from a dream about Ross’s phone at 7:20am to Ross’s alarm going off, which means he must work normal hours unlike Henry whose alarm goes off at MIDNIGHT. I began fantasizing about having a normal relationship with a man who keeps normal hours, waking up together every morning in the same bed….

God, I hope he doesn’t snore.

But then I couldn’t get the alarm to stop, and it proceeded to go off every five minutes for the rest of the day, which will probably be the impetus to our first fight.

“Just take the battery out,” Henry said wearily after I called him for the 87th time in a row. (Hello, if he would just ANSWER the first time, I wouldn’t have to keep calling.) But I didn’t feel comfortable taking the battery out of some other person’s phone. Besides, then I wouldn’t be able to monitor his incoming calls.

I mean…what?

At 11:00, my sanity had splintered. Could not take the sound of that alarm anymore. So I came up with the best solution ever: A “Call Me Maybe” dance party! I put it on loud and on repeat, and Chooch and I totally wilded out. That song is like fucking sunshine for the ears, OK?

I should note that by “dancing,” I mean that I jumped around for 90 minutes, speed-bagging the air like one of those big inflatable balloon monsters outside of car lots, while Chooch repeatedly punched me, vigorously and with closed fists. I guess he learned that by watching me “dance” with Henry.

CHAIR DANCING TO “CALL ME, MAYBE”!

Even with Carly Rae Jepsen singing at her loudest, I could still hear the fucking phone alarm, so I ran upstairs and smothered it beneath Henry’s pillow. I could still hear it, but at least it was muffled, and at that point, it didn’t sound worse than any of the other sounds in my head, so who am I to complain, really.

“Look Mommy! I’m Ju-On dancing!” he cried, squirming beneath the chair like his favorite Japanese horror villain. OK. Whatever.

Weirdo.

UNICORN MASK DANCE PARTY! SAME SONG, DIFFERENT HEAD!

And then Henry came home and pooped on all of the fun. Turning down the volume to the best song of all time, he informed that he was meeting Ross (who lives right down the street, how convenient for my future booty calls!) at 6pm; Ross said if he can’t make it, he’ll just send his girlfriend.

Just like that, my dreams were dashed. Now I’m really regretting not taking all of those pictures of myself with his phone like I had considered. God, I’m so stupid.

As soon as we got in the car (read: The Juice Van; our car is still not fixed), “Call Me Maybe” came on the radio. Chooch and I cheered in tandem as I turned up the volume and began dramatically lip synching.

The “I’m Trying So Hard to Frown But It’s Hard To When I Secretly Love This Song, Goddamn You, Carly Rae Jepsen” faux-frown.

“Try to get a picture of Ross!” I called out over my shoulder when Henry dropped me off at work. I know he totally won’t, but I’m still in the best mood ever today.