Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 13:53 I can’t even get drunk without losing interest. #
• 20:25 You can’t bury people in your yard? #
• 20:47 No one ever stops me on the street and asks me to dance, which is a shame if you know me. #
• 09:53 Watching Blue’s Clues episode about frustration. Learning lots. #

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Kara was in town over the weekend and invited me to lunch at Zenith. It was really her friend Valerie’s idea, whom I was excited to finally get to meet after knowing her on LiveJournal for a few years. However, Kara made the mistake of telling me that her fiancé Chris commented that Valerie and I have really different personalities and he wondered how well we would get along. This of course turned into the Telephone Game and by the time I told Henry what Chris had said, it went something like, "Chris said Valerie is a crazy asshole and she’s secretly hated me for twenty years and is going to be waiting for me in an alley with barbed wire, a chainsaw and a turkey baster and OHMYGOD!"

Turns out, Valerie was really nice and I didn’t hate her and she didn’t seem to hate me either. People usually like me for the first three months, so we’ll check back with her over the summer.

Zenith is half vegetarian restaurant with an amazing tea menu and half antique shop with a mother lode of religious icons and musty racks of polyester muumuus; I saw at least eight dresses that I desperately want to purchase for the animal mask photo shoot, Kara found a new wedding dress, and Valerie found a very Blanche Deveroux bathing suit. It’s a good thing she didn’t buy it, because she totally wouldn’t have looked right in it unless she built a lanai off the back of her house and furnished it with white wicker, which she should actually do and then invite me over every weekend so I can lay out and read some Danielle Steele. Maybe also she can brew up some mint tea and serve me some of that shit.

And even though Zenith has quite possibly the best collection of wall-mounted owl tsotchkes to ogle while taking a piss, my favorite part was our server, Keith. (I’m pretty sure he was Kara and Valerie’s favorite part, too, but I could be wrong. No, wait, I’m always right.) Even in his sleepy state, he was personable and helpful and super cute; he would make lazy laps around the empty restaurant, butting into our conversation now and then. When I asked to take his picture, he initially declined, maybe in fear that I would Photoshop it and he’d find himself on some raunchy, nude waitstaff website — I have that shady, no-good look to me, I guess.  I eventually talked him into it and for someone who, minutes earlier, was so opposed to the prospect of being photographed, he began busting out an arsonal of GQ poses with no hesitation.

This picture does no justice to his awesomeness! I keep wanting to call him Ben, though. He really looks like a Ben to me.

Keith brought us out our side salads, the largest salads I’ve ever seen stuffed into really small bowls; it was like the vegetation version of clown cars. As soon as he set the bowls down in front of us, leaves of lettuce the size of elephant ears began unfolding and springing forth. It was the most difficult, not to mention aggressive, salad my fork tines have ever speared.

After feeling like I had just slashed my way through a jungle in ‘Nam, Keith delivered my black bean burger which was capped with another lettuce leaf the size of a yarmulke. "Oh good, more lettuce," I said before casting it to the side.

Meanwhile, Valerie and Kara talked about cheese and condom-wrapped plunger sticks, but I was too busy trying to keep my mind from detonating over all the photographical ideas that place was feeding me. I want to go back there every day until I exhaust every vision I have, or drink every tea on their menu, whichever comes first.

(More photos here.)

Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 12:59 Having the best waiter ever right now. #
• 13:52 Want to change photoshoot locale to the bathroom of where I ate lunch. #
• 16:43 Was supposed to hang with my bro at our g-ma’s but aunt is acting crizazy again. #
• 18:53 Henrys doing yardwork for the first time in ten yrs. #
• 20:21 I think if I found a box full of sharp objects, the day wouldn’t be so beautiful. Dangerous maybe; beautiful, not so much. #
• 11:28 Henry buys cookies to keep me fat. #
• 11:48 Suddenly started crying while listening to Circa Survive; Henry rolled eyes. #

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Kara is the keeper of the owls. If one might have an inclination to try and remove an owl from the wall or maybe, say, rub their genitals against one, it just might provoke her to step out from the mirror, gouge the offender’s eyes out, blend it up into an ocular smoothie and invite the owl predator to drink up. Cheers.

(*This was taken at lunch yesterday, which I will write about when it is not Sunday, because on Sundays I don’t like to be writin’. I do important things on Sundays, like bug the shit out of Henry and make him buy me things and then maybe I might kick around some pebbles down at the graveyard, drink some Jack on the pier, become embroiled in a knife fight with a bike gang: my world is pregnant with possibilies.)

Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 10:03 Trying to build something AWESOME with blocks but Chooch keeps taking them from me.#
• 10:22 Henry just came home to chooch & me shrieking & stampeding & said "ppl walking by must think idiots live here." Hope so. #
• 11:29 Working from home is for gaybos. #
• 16:48 Just bathed in the crumbs of a Russian tea cake. #
• 16:56 Getting complimented on my perfume by Tina makes me feel like she’s coming on to me. #
• 17:44 At exactly 405pm my heart fluttered. Wtf I’m a sucker. #
• 18:06 I hate that I can proofread the shit out of someone else’s writing but I look like a bumbling hick w/ my own. #
• 21:45 If I was a robot, I’d want to be made of copper. Maybe stuffed with the guts of a dead nun. #
• 22:13 Eleanore has graduated from coupon cutting to construction paper cutting. #
• 09:37 Convinced my kid is going to grow up to be a scary contortionist in a Tool video. #
• 11:11 Just told my 2yo son he needs to start pulling his weight around here. Was srs. #
• 11:31 Chooch doesn’t like pierogies. People in Pittsburgh get beat up for that. #

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A few weeks ago, I reported that Tina had a mysterious wound on her temple. Days passed and it was still there, sometimes scabbed over, sometimes just as fresh and juicy as the first time I noticed it.

Today, I came in early and she asked that I take a walk with her so she could rant and rave like old times. As we walked to the door, I noticed that she was dabbing at her temple trauma with a folded napkin. She pulled the napkin away and it was saturated with bright red blood.

It was BLEEDING.

The question was begging to be asked, so I did. I asked her what the fuck it was, that sticky mound of ruined flesh on the side of her head, what was it?! I tried really hard to keep my mouth from becoming too agape, eyes from becoming too widened.

"Oh, it’s a bug bite. I’ve been picking at it today."

I’m not entirely sure I believe her, but when we came back inside, I excitedly emailed Bob to fill him in. He read it, laughed and said, "I can’t believe you asked her!"

"Dude, it was BLEEDING. Right in front of me! Of course I’m going to ask!"

Then he joked that it was more like an anaconda bite and we laughed and of course Big Bob turned around and asked what was so funny, but we didn’t tell him.

I still like my theory that her husband bitch-slapped her with a candle stick.

Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 11:27 I was never OK with having ice cream dripping down my wrists. Not then, not now. Maybe tomorrow. #
• 15:16 I hate the boys at work! They make fun of me. #
• 18:28 I laff when ppl refer to henry as my "man" #
• 22:11 Cheez-its make a crappy dinner. Maybe if I at least had a side of Swedish Fish, we’d be talkin’. #

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FOR YOU. Another mixtape thing.

Unicorns make good dildos.

Instead of working, I’m flipping through an old notebook I kept when I was sixteen; a scrapbook of decoupaged pages of magazine clippings and ads for haunted houses, stream-of-consciousness scribblings, and my signature brand of really stupid poems. Also apparently I was running a CD rental program and kept a log of who had what and when it was returned.

It seems on one really special occasion, I felt compelled to list my idols at the top of one the pages.

1. Michael Myers
2. Jason Voorhees
3. Ellen DeGeneres
4. Bizzie Bone, of Bone Thugs n Harmony fame
5. Jennifer Aniston
6. DaBrat
7. El DeBarge

No wonder my parents are so proud of me.

Hopefully, I still have time to become a lesbian psychopathic (just a few breakdowns away!) killer with awesome flow, a penchant for chainsaws, and perfect hair before falling into obscurity (seriously, El, where did you go?). Luckily, I already have the ‘brat’ part mastered.

I don’t have any idols anymore.

Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 11:11 Peeing pants at dentist’s. #
• 15:55 In chooch’s hands: black babydoll & naked white babydoll w/ red lips, alienish cranium. #
• 17:17 wishing i had a mallet with which to clunk myself on head. #
• 19:30 Evidently I’m oblivious to a lot of things. #
• 20:17 I wish I was pretty like a cake. Unless its an armadillo cake. #
• 20:30 Now that Bob and Collin are gone, Eleanore and I talk about diapers and itchy skin. Oh, the laffs. #
• 20:51 I’m pretty like a urinal cake, anyway. #

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Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 14:38 Movie being filmed down the street from my work. So badly want to disrupt. #
• 16:59 Kmfdm would be good background music for settling a score. #
• 17:49 I hate that antifreeze looks like such a refreshing beverage. #
• 19:01 Thanks for the hair in my food, Henry. Yummy delicious. #
• 19:18 I think my aunt is trying to kill my grandma? #
• 19:18 You know I like you when I’ll listen to a 3-disc live recording of your fave band.#
• 22:02 My boss accidentally burnt her popcorn. Mine now! #
• 10:11 Mandatory overtime does not suit my lifestyle. #
• 10:13 Anyone who sends me a letter in an envelope made from a Homies poster knows me very well. #

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Went to the dentist today to get my permanent crown cemented and also a filling because apparently my oral vigilance doesn’t pay off. After the hygienist removed the temporary one and finished cleaning off the old cement, she must have noticed that my face had blanched because she withdrew the suction tube from my mouth and asked, "Are you OK?"

"Oh, I’m fine," I answered curtly. "Just trying not to let my tongue touch the old tooth. The one that’s a stub now? Kind of freaks me out."

The hygienist laughed. Not just a tiny giggle, but a hearty laugh, a Santa-getting-his-taint-tickled belly laugh. It was so unnecessary.

Later, when my dentist came in to do the heavy duty labor, she replaced one of the cotton logs that was resting against the side of my tongue. "That’s always the worst part, you know? The feel of dry cotton in your mouth."

Absolutely. It’s not the syringe pinching burning hot Novocaine into the gums; it’s not having two masked faces and two sets of hands hovering over and probing every cranny of the grill; it’s not that shit they use to fill cavities, because that tastes delicious, like a cup of molten dime juice; and it’s certainly not the money coming out of the pocket afterward because dental insurance is a joke.

It’s the feel of dry cotton in your mouth.

The lady I steal candy from at work is going to see Joe Jackson this Saturday. I know this because I saw it scribbled (in high-alert red marker) on her calendar as I fisted a generous helping of prailine pecans from the jar on her shelf.

If there was one moment in my life I’d love to be able to re-watch with a bowl of popcorn, it would be that day in fifth grade when Mike Harrison called Mrs. Glumac — the  obligatory meanest, nastiest, wartiest, tan-quilted-parka-in-the-winter wearingest lunch lady at our school — a bitch in the middle of a high stakes game of kickball, after she called him out unfairly.  Before she even had a chance to threaten him with a paddle, he took that rubber ball and hurled it at her face with the might of a thousand scorned bipolar women, smashing and breaking her glasses against her face.

He smashed them for every kid holding their piss on that playground, every kid that Mrs.

Glumac brought to tears in the cafeteria and every kid whose peaceful sleep was ever jarred into a fitful nightmare of hair nets and deadened eyes and Glumacian orders to line against the wall.

I remember how everyone just got really quiet, and Mrs. Glumac and Mike just stood there at a standstill, both in shock, we were all in shock. Mike was legendary in our eyes after that, having done what every kid thinks of doing, dreams of doing, wishes someone else would do to the cruel lunch lady who makes penises worldwide cower when she walks into a room. It was fucking awesome. I had a crush on him for real after that.

He totally got in so much trouble.

I used to keep a little log of daily happenings back then, just a little miniature spiral-topped notebook that I would write things like, “Spring is wearing a ponytail today — she’s going to be mean!” and “Oops, I have to sharpen my pencil!” It wasn’t a private diary, it was pine green, and everyone knew about it; so when we came back in from recess, everyone was all, “Erin, did you write about it yet, let us read what you wrote about it!” I believe all it said was a very succint “Mike H. called Mrs. Glumac a bitch then broke her glasses!” and everyone cheered when they saw the word “bitch” in actual penciled handwriting.

Urgent. Will die without reading.

• 17:48 Playing with two doll arms. Possibilities are endless. #
• 21:17 I hate when I finally figure out what I want in life and it winds up being something dumb. Like circus peanuts. #
• 21:50 Someday I will make the front page. Its my destiny. Probably it will be the Pennysaver but I’ll take it. #
• 00:46 I want to have a yard sale and sell my family. Maybe a spatula and lampshade, too. #

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