My name is Francis and I am an exotic fixture at a bumpin’ little place called The Wet Fish, just started there last week after graduating high school.

At first, I could not master the art of pole dancing, but things there have been progressively getting better. You know what they say: One does not give up just because of a little Indian brush burn to the crotch.

So I tried and tried and tried again until finally one of the seasoned pole charmers, Snapper, came to my aid and clasped her hands around my waist to add support while I gyrated and spiraled down the pole. Her fingers were yellowed from years of smoking Pall Malls’ that reminded me of my grandmama, who was also in the business back in the day. That gave me hope and a sense of familiarity.

We are not allowed to go topless because one night there was a suited man seated in the corner and the sight of topless women triggered something innately homicidal that he never knew he had in him, and he sliced a dancer open with a broken beer bottle. Ernie, the manager, made a new rule that requires us to wear pasties. I use pepperoni to cover up. It’s all part of my routine: I saunter onto stage with a piping hot pizza from Geno’s and seductively pull off two discs of pepperoni and slap them over my nipples, letting the attached cheese ooze down my chest like draping ornamental chains. It makes me feel like a Vegas showgirl. The guys seem to really like it because the scalding of my flesh makes me yell out in pain. Plus, it distracts them from my club foot. And the fact that it is hard to hoist my thick body up off the floor when I do my pole routine.

The other night when I was writhing around the peanut-shelled floor, shimmying in the direction of a rotund man in overalls and hoping for a tip greater than a can of sardines, I kept catching the scent of Dorito’s and seaweed salad. The biting tang seemed to get stronger every time I would do one of my signature leg lifts. The room cleared out rather quickly, except for one gangly old man who tipped me two dollars, a Chuck E. Cheese token and a recipe from the back of a Campbell’s Soup label, reasoning that my odor reminded him of his mama’s cookin’.

It wasn’t until after my show that I realized the scent was emanating from the sanitary napkin that I had left adhered to my underwear for over a week.

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Earth-shattering updates throughout the day, brought to you by Tart-Tits. Please try to continue breathing while taking it all in.

• 16:58 I never thought when I saw 3Oh3! at Warped Tour that I’d be hearing them a year later on So You Think You Can Dance. #
• 16:58 @saucalisha I REALLY WANT STREUDEL. #
• 20:06 Apparently, we have a mallet. I know this because my son just walked in the room & almost struck me dead with it. #
• 21:28 I should start wearing a bonnet during any sort of sexual activities, like gang rapes & cock choppings. #
• 21:32 I should also wear a bonnet while eating streudel, & then use the tag #appropriatebonnetoccasions #
• 22:41 Someone better give me a Prayer Cross for my birthday so I can gaze with amazement. Haven’t gazed like that since I saw prosthetic leg porn. #
  

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• 10:42 Sometimes I like to give Henry recaps from the last Degrassi episode I watched. Often he thinks I’m talking about real people. Wish I was:( #
• 12:12 Today, we buy a helmet for the klutz. Probably would be a good idea to pick one up for the kid, too. #
• 13:02 Made coupons for my shop & each discount code is a 70s porn star. Just call them couPORNS if you will. I love them. #
• 14:14 I don’t know why everyone hates my Summer Jamz, Holla mix CD. I can tell you it makes me raise the roof, that’s how BUCK it is. #
• 14:21 twitpic.com/8l6mt – BUTTERFLIES. #
• 15:38 Henry, after I tried to put windows down in the car wash: I locked them. Me: Why!? Henry: B/c I knew you’d try to put them down? #
• 18:15 If you could see my jackass son right now, you’d think he was abused, thanks to all the facial/head marring from three separate incidents. #
• 19:38 Henry & I are engaged in a sort of relationship repair olympics. He got me sushi & red bean mochi ice cream. Good for the silver. #
• 19:39 Revolutionary War porn for the gold. #
• 19:41 I looked out the window in time to see a tree walking down my driveway. #
  

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• 00:55 Henry should compliment me more on my wonderful dairy. And then I’ll say “Isn’t he wonderful?” as I watch him urinate in the wild. #
• 14:00 Men have all the answers. Thank god for men. #
• 21:58 Purposely drove through some dangerous areas & nothing happened. Dratsies. #
  

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• 00:49 Whenever I go thru the motions, I’m always left with a sticky residue. #
• 10:29 Some broad @ my neighbor’s mistook Chooch’s chin-bruise for dirt & tried to scrub it. Henry informed her that he’s just abused, not dirty #
• 10:41 Interesting. Ex-bff is on my blog right now. #

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What is your favorite way to de-stress on a Sunday?

I was going to write about last Sunday when I spent the day at Kennywood with Henry, Chooch, Blake and Alisha, but all I want to do today is watch the Degrassi marathon, listen to Seaweed and Jawbox, and paint. I’m coming off the tailend of a long and stressful week & my brain has exclamation marks, asterisks and ampersands ricocheting around (and there’s an umlaut doing something strange over by the temporal lobe) and I think that means it wants me to shut it off for a little while. The (very few) moments I have time alone, I catch myself zoning out and staring open-mouthed at the wall. I’m starting to think the best place for me is a cabin in an isolated forest where no one but a deranged man with a hacksaw can find me. I’d even take a beach at this point, and I am SO NOT a beach person.

Also, our neighbors are having a birthday luau for their daughter and it has been going on all the livelong day. At one point, I glanced out the kitchen window while painting (that’s my studio, you know) and spotted some haggard-looking broad sitting under the party tent that Henry helped set up because he’s always so eager to help everyone else but god forbid I should ask him to do a single thing for me and expect it to be done.

So I point out the window and go, “Who’s that lady?” and Henry goes, “That’s Renee, that’s the one whose birthday it is.” Now, I know my eyes are bad, but I always thought that Renee was much younger than me, so I’m a little confused at this point.

“How old is she?” I ask, and Henry informed me that she just turned 24.

She looks much older than me, and I’m about to be thirty in a month. I mentioned this to Henry, and added that she seems to act much older than me, as well.

“Sweetheart,” Henry started, as he braced my shoulders with his meat-paws, “everyone acts older than you.”

I’m growing bored with this blog.

Help.

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Earth-shattering updates throughout the day, brought to you by Tart-Tits. Please try to continue breathing while taking it all in.

• 17:59 In the one minute span it took me to order our pizza, I was called “babydoll” “honey girl” and “sweetheart” by the girl on the other end. #
• 22:22 Very serious about making Bumpit porn into a reality. I think there’s definitely a market for pompadour’d pubes. ‘Bout to get rich. #
  

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• 01:20 Being told how I should or shouldn’t feel gets old after awhile/8 yrs/all my life. #
• 10:11 Precious Moments, urine samples, Clay Aiken posters, STDs, Duggar afterbirth: What are Terrible Things to Collect. #
• 12:08 The ability to turn any situation into a party by launching confetti out ur asshole: #crapsuperpowers. (OR IS IT.) #
• 12:15 I miss the glory days of floating all day in my pappap’s pool, listening to slow jam mixtapes on a yellow Aiwa walkman, plotting murders. #
• 13:21 Just chased my nude son down the street. #
• 20:36 Watching someone try not to puke is in the top 5 of things that make me laugh hardest. #
• 23:05 So badly do I want to watch @saucalisha put a puzzle together while receiving electrical jolts. #
  

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• 17:33 Thanks, because it had been way too long since the last time I caught a rock with my teeth. #
• 19:18 Welp…we kept saying we wanted to see the inside of the new Childrens Hospital. #
• 19:36 Everyone needs someone like me around during accidents. I add that extra punch of trauma and hysteria. Someone bleeding? Watch as I faint! #
• 20:19 Thank god we got a young & cute female doctor. She’s the only one who was allowed to touch Chooch’s wound, as he looked down & blushed. #
• 20:23 Spellcheck changed Chooch’s name to Shoot, might have to adapt that. #
• 20:23 twitpic.com/8bujl – Welcome back from war, Private Shoot. #
• 20:52 Watching a 3yo get staples in his head is not something I had on my bucket list. As soon as I scrape my heart off the floor, we’re leaving. #
  

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• 10:30 It’s good to know that a few staples won’t keep my child from acting like an asshole. #
• 12:18 To my friends who make their own soap/bath products: does it generally take 3mths+ to make & ship orders? Just wondering. #
• 13:39 RIP Farrah Fawcett. #
• 14:21 I’m so glad Chooch now drinks his juice like a contestant on Silent Library, complete with dry heaves & riotous sprays of saliva & liquid. #
• 20:27 Made a Twitter solely for my art shit. If you’re interested in updates, etc, add it! @somnambulantart #
• 22:44 Every ten minutes it’s “Watch, my staples!” & “Don’t touch my staples!” It’s bringing back memories of what I was like after the C-section #
• 22:46 Except that once my staples were removed, it turned into “watch my incision!!” & I dragged that out for 6mths. OK, a year. #
  

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• 00:56 Degrassi, I’m “sorey” but your spirit squad blows. #
• 11:15 Giving Chooch his first taste of the “Thriller” video. I still can’t believe my first celeb crush is dead! (Shut up, he used to be hot.) #
• 15:52 On the 653th viewing of the Thriller video. I should have known better. #
• 15:55 As the latest play-back comes to an end, Chooch wants everyone to know that it’s his “jam.” And now he’s lovingly holding the CD.
• 16:58 If I were a farmer, I’d hire German girls to be my apple pickers and then beat them with a belt while they baked me streudel.

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Leaving Penelope’s shipwreck, Poppy paused. “Am I missing some stockings?” she asked, studying her swishing tentacles.

Paige scoped out her friend’s goods. “Yes, it appears you certainly are missing some stockings.” Glancing down at her own gyrating stems, she went on to say, “And it appears I’m flashing some bareness as well.”

Paige and Poppy looked at each other and rolled their eyes in unison. Every time they spent the night at Penelope’s, they always wound up with AWOL undergarments.

“I know Penelope’s parents have been hurting for money, but this is just ridiculous,” Poppy steamed. “She must have enough of our stuff to photograph her own lingerie catalogue by now.

“

They turned in their wake and buoyed back over to Penelope’s. As they cornered her in her room, Penelope’s father floated down the hallway wearing Poppy’s bra and, on two of his chubby tentacles, Paige’s stockings were pulled up taut.

One already had a runner.

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Chooch fell down the steps earlier this evening. Thank god he was nearly all the way to the bottom before it happened, but he still fell from a distance great enough to result in a full flip through the air and a sloppy landing into the corner of a bookshelf.

I was at the bottom of the steps when it happened. First, I saw his toy airplane hit the floor, and when I heard a second thump, I turned toward the steps expecting to see more of his toys being hurled, as he sometimes does to be a dick. But the second thump turned out to be Chooch himself, hitting the fourth-to-the-last step and then bouncing back into the air long enough to gain the speed necessary to acquire a gooey gash on the side of his dome.

It was a flash of his blue shirt, a sickening thud, and my heart was lodged in my throat.

There was blood.

Since it was a head wound, there was a LOT of blood.

I remember there was that moment when time just flat out stopped, and we stared at each other, him in a supine position on the carpeted landing, and me in a paralyzed lunge. And then I think we started wailing hysterically in tandem. I saw the blood and my legs went noodley and I began gagging which caused HIM to gag and he was crying so hard and I was just flat out in a state of motherfucking PANIC.

Every time my brain would start to churn out rational thoughts, my synapses would get clogged with the sight of blood. It would be like, “Call the doct—-BLOODOMGBLOOD.” “Get some ice from the freez—-OH HOLY FUCK THAT’S A LOT OF BLOOD.” “Chooch, sit down—-OMG HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE THAT’S LIKE AN ENTIRE PERSON WORTH OF BLOOD.”

And he wouldn’t let me touch it. He just kept sobbing “Don’t touch me! Leave me alone!” and he squatted under the dining room table and all I could think was that what if he hit his head so hard that his memory got all fucked up and his mind put together some horrible fable wherein I pushed him down the stairs?

It took something like 28 phone calls to Henry consisting of me screaming all helter skelter at him before Henry finally deduced that he should definitely not be at work and thank god for that man because he walked through the front door all calm-like just as I had gotten Chooch to settle down by putting on Silent Library, best show ever. Henry scoped out the gash as best as Chooch would let him, never once accused me of being a shitty mother, and very sedately announced, “OK let’s go to the hospital.” Just like that. He didn’t cry. His voice didn’t tremble. His knees didn’t quake. He kept it together and let me be the shaky, nervous, panicked, OMG-death-is-imminent parent.

It was slow night for emergencies so we were seen within ten minutes of arriving at the new Childrens Hospital.

After a nurse took his vitals (I wish she would have checked my blood pressure, too) we were deposited into an exam room, where an older woman in a black cardigan came in wielding a clip board. “OMG it’s a social worker, I’m being questioned, they’re going to take my son away from me” was what went through my mind. It turned out to just be someone from Reception, who wanted to verify our address and insurance information. I resumed regular breathing.

Every time I would close my eyes, I saw the accident happening all over again, and it turned into a video game where I try to control myself to get there faster and catch him. Henry kept drilling it into my head that it wasn’t my fault, but I was the one home with him. I had just been with him too — he was in his room, where he goes to poop, and I checked in on him. He said he wasn’t done, I said take your time. I came back downstairs and it happened a minute later. And in the midst of all the commotion, all the crying, and all the blood, all he wanted was for me to change his poopy Pull-Up.

We were blessed to have a young and pretty doctor, and Chooch set him sights on her immediately. He actually let her, without a fight, push his ringlets to the side so she could assess the damage. She ran through some standard tests, making him follow simple instructions like touching his nose, sticking out his tongue, and touching her fingertip, and gave us the reassuring news that she saw no need for scans and that he didn’t seem to have suffered any neurological damage. She left, and we were left to entertain him for twenty minutes while the numbing agent sat on his wound.

Of course, he was back to being a crazy ass, doing and saying all the odd things he’s wont to do and say, and I asked rhetorically, “But was he EVER neurologically sound?” It was also fun to tell him that the zombies were skulking about the hospital floors, searching for him, because they could smell his brain stench emanating from his glutinous scalp cleft. Henry scolded me, so of course I did it some more. What, Chooch LOVES zombies!

While the doctor was gone, Chooch started acting real goofy, walking in clumsy circles and talking with a protruding tongue. At first I was like, “Maybe he hit his head harder than we thought…” but then it hit me. “He’s acting like a kid with a crush,” I pointed out to Henry, who heartily agreed.

“This is how he was acting around the girls working in Kiddieland on Sunday,” Henry said, and we laughed as Chooch pressed his face against the sliding door of the exam room, eye-flirting with a nurse out in the hall. Then I had a fleeting vision of hm growing up to be the next Richard Speck and suddenly it wasn’t so cute anymore.

Chooch wound up getting three staples. The doctor came back with a nurse and somehow they managed to keep him prone on the exam table with him displaying nary a buck or struggle. He whimpered a little when his wound was being washed, and he definitely cried audibly during the stapling, but all in all I’d say he was much braver than I ever would have been in his position. I’d have been, “It’s OK, just let me bleed out, k, c-ya bye” if someone came near my head with a fucking medical stapler, bitch you better step off.

Chooch didn’t want to remove his patient smock, so the doctor let him keep it, along with the large syringe she used to squirt his wound with water.

We were in and out within an hour and a half. The new hospital is amazing and it was a much better experience than the last time we had to take him to the old Childrens Hospital.

 n of course, why should my night end quietly, all the neighbors were out when we came home so I got to tell them all about how I’m a shitty mother who couldn’t function when her kid needed her most. I just keep getting more and more awesome.

Of course, once we were home, Chooch had at least ten more near-accidents, four of which were on the steps.

19 comments

Sometimes, when I stupidly have an urge to procreate again, I go back and read some of my pregnancy posts on LiveJournal, wherein I am quickly reminded to close them legs up, close ’em up tight, ya’ll.

Today, I had a fleeting desire to try and birth a creature that might actually enjoy to cuddle with its mother, unlike Chooch who might as well just start pulling a switchblade out of his underroos and rolling cigarettes in his shirt sleeve. So to LiveJournal I went, and I found this lovely memory of Ponderosa and realized that hey, I still haven’t been to a buffet since then. This grudge thing, it comes easy to me.

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Originally written January 13, 2006

It was all Henry’s bright idea, really. While idling around the house, wondering what to do for dinner (I was content extending my breakfast and lunch of gummies into the evening), Henry suggested Ponderosa. I quickly thought back upon my last trip to a buffet and decided that I wasn’t living life to the fullest unless I gave it another go. Besides, my mom used to take me to Ponderosa when I was a wee chitlin’, and if memory served me right, I believe I liked it.

Things immediately got off to a rocky start when we arrived. I stood in front of the large menu hanging on the wall behind the counter, heart rate increasing from the impending pressure cast onto me from the impatient stares of Henry and the cashier. My only option, of course, was the buffet, as everything else was steak, steak, seafood with a steak smoothie, or super steak. That’s gross for a vegetarian.

We walked over to the secluded booth I chose and it was here when I became arrested by what I affectionately call Fish Out of Water Syndrome. I stood there, next to the table, with one knee on the slippery booth, looking to Papa H for guidance. Do we sit down first? Do we stand here and wait for a signal, a green light or the peal of a dinner bell? Maybe we should just leave; I really wanted to just leave.

“What do we do now?” I whispered. I could feel the anxiety branching its russet fingers across my face, panic wavering from my flesh like heat on the horizon.

“Uh, we go up and get a plate,” Henry chided in the tone he reserves for moments he feels I should be reminded of my fucking retardedness, after which he stood there and stared at me for a second longer, then shook his head and walked away. I quickly ran after him, grasping onto the elbow of his shirt with my sweaty fingers.

I hung back awkwardly, observing Henry’s professional buffet maneuvering. Following his lead, I grabbed a plate, making certain it didn’t come complete with a hair like his selection did, and then I began to tentatively prong clumps of withered lettuce into a small mound on my plate. The lack of fresh spinach among the salad spread had me so bereft that I had to mentally talk myself down from tear-shed. Hormones are a bitch, but to be fair I probably would have stamped my foot even without-child. Two steps down, an employee was coveting the green pepper slices, thereby monopolizing the container from all the paying customers such as myself who really had their hearts set on the addition of the crisp, snappy vegetable to their salad. The peppers were already overflowing! There was no need for restocking at that particular moment, but then I remembered that to me, buffets are  merely an extension of a waking nightmare, so I tried to stop having standards and began to expect typical salad fare to lie in festering clumps, marinating in general buffet splooge and skin flakes from the arms of overreaching salad fixers.

Sans peppers, I moved on to the dressings, which I was delighted to find were not labeled. I blindly added a small dribble to the center of my spinach- and pepper-less crap hill, and shuffled back to our booth with my head down. (I shuffle while pregnant.)

As I pushed the questionable bits of salad around on my plate, I took the time to scope out what nonpareils Henry had acquired. This resulted in an interrogation of how he managed to escape my side long enough to seek out an array of slightly-edible choices. Items such as a golden roll and mac n’ cheese garnished the edges of his plate; things that maybe I would have enjoyed as well.

“If you would have continued along, you would have run right into it,” he explained while tearing chicken off the bone like a caveman, as I whimpered with jealousy.

It’s true, I could have taken more time to explore the depths of the buffet, but not while some old man was breathing down my back, waiting for the right moment to swoop down under the sneeze shield. He was right up against me, tongue wagging and elbows primed and jutted, waiting for the opportunity to start jabbing. I imagined him coating me in the remnants of his impending whirling dervish, and to be honest, I wasn’t trying to stick around for that. Buffets make me feel so rushed as it is, but throw a buffet bully into the mix and watch me freak out like the amazing social abortion that we all know I can be.

After I explained this scene to Henry, while trying to be brave and stifle my tears, he promised to take me back once I picked my way through the salad. Henry’s plate of thoroughly gnashed goods had long since been whisked away by the nicotine-damaged waitress, and still the minutes ticked on. He sat hunched over the table, watching me with his glazed-over eyes as I tediously cut too-large florets of broccoli into bite-sized morsels with his knife.

(My knife was adhered to the napkin it was rolled in, courtesy of an unknown viscous substance, so I wasn’t really anticipating using it on food that would eventually wind up in my mouth.)

By the time I had devoured all parts of the salad that appeared to be health code compliant, there were too many people in line at the buffet, so I made Henry wait some more. It was during this interim that I really got a good look at my fellow diners. Interspersed with folk of Henry’s ilk, and a handful of citizens who looked like they could self-suffice for a few weeks without sustenance, sat:

• (1) man who arrived with his belt already unbuckled;
• a troika of children who had thrown their jackets onto the floor upon arrival and then proceeded to lay on them;
• a group of guys who clearly had just gotten high out in the parking lot

I also finally got to put a face on the noisy nose-blower behind me. And boy I wish I hadn’t, because for that moment in time, I feared that I had somehow wound up in Appalachia.

On my second round of facing the ominous buffet, Henry walked me through and pointed out things that maybe I would enjoy, like cottage cheese, potato salad and macaroni and cheese; it was like having my own guided tour and I felt the need to ask when we were going to see the basement. Little dollops of everything Henry recommended dotted the perimeter of my plate, which I then crowned with a hesitant spoonful of buttered noodles (they looked like worms swimming in snot, you guys) and chocolate pudding (it looked like soft serve poop with a  diarrhea skin, you guys). Henry brought me back a smaller plate featuring a diminutive lump of mashed potatoes (which I took one taste of and gagged back up for added effect), nachos and cheese, and a slice of pizza.

I’m really glad that he had the foresight to include the nachos because otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to deduce that the cheese sauce festering away in that vat on the buffet was the same exact coagulated concoction used to coat the macaroni. It was disgusting, and it made my face crumple up like an air-filled paper bag being crushed.

I may have struck out with everything on my plates, but I still had the pizza to count on. The cheese was so thick and heavy, congealed with a luminous sheen of grease not unlike a pool of oil in a parking lot or the complexion of an amputee after performing a one-legged fornication obstacle course on the most humid day of the summer while chugging mugs of habanera chili, that I had to use a fork to pry the slice off the plate. Mistaking that I was in a real restaurant, with a real slice of pizza in my paws, I dove right in. And what a shock to the taste buds (whom I have promised to make it up to, by the way) as they drowned in a wad of artery-plugging mush. I managed to lumber through half before the thick tomato paste became too much to bear. And the crust was like no other: A strange hybrid of what one might assume was soggy Ritz crackers crumbled and rolled out with Nilla Wafers on a tray spritzed with Grandma’s Aquanet to form a sad semblance of pizza dough. I was intrigued. Nauseated, yes; but intrigued nonetheless.

Hope blossomed around the ingested sludge in my stomach when Henry suggested that maybe the desserts would be better. He brought back a smörgåsbord of pint-sized confections: A small bowl, which bore a striking resemblance to an ashtray, housed a small portion each of sugar-plated bread pudding and a crumbled mass of what I believe had “apple” in the name. Next to the bowl, he set down a plate which carried a slice of some curious variety of sweet bread and a brownie.

The crap in the bowl was decent, but the brownie was no more than a glorified piece of school cafeteria cake with an APB out on the icing. And the bread! Good Lord, the bread. Having the inferior taste buds that are programmed into your average blue-collar worker, Henry masticated his bite of bread as though it were a caviar-capped truffle, but I droned on and on about how dry it was — I even conducted an experiment using a small sample of bread, a sip of water, and an extended tongue — and oh yeah, what exactly was I eating, anyway? He insisted it was nothing more than nut bread, but halfway through the shared slice, I bit into a mushy mouthful of banana.

“It’s banana bread!” I announced as I pulled the plate away from Henry and happily ate the rest.

“So because you now know it’s banana bread, it’s suddenly good?” A veritable pylon of steam chugged from his ears as Henry wrestled with this concept. I love confusing him with my nonsensical food laws.

Unfortunately, one slice of banana bread is not enough to change my prior conception of the buffet, so from this day forward, the word will be completely obliterated from my vocabulary. Buffets no longer exist in my universe.

The lesson learned is that evidently, my boobs aren’t the only thing that have gone and changed on me since I’ve entered adulthood; my taste buds are no longer the same under-developed specks upon my tongue as I once knew them to be. Which explains why Chuck E. Cheese pizza isn’t exactly a delicacy worth writing home about these days, either.

What bothers me the most is that I still don’t know what dressing I had covering my wilted salad.

5 comments

Earth-shattering updates throughout the day, brought to you by Tart-Tits. Please try to continue breathing while taking it all in.

• 18:20 The first person to ever commit suicide must have had a three-year-old. #
• 18:43 Making a list of “accidents.” #
• 19:07 “I don’t know how Henry wound up vivisected, in a pot of soup, wearing a Mexican necktie, Officer. Must have been some sort of accident.” #
  

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• 14:05 Silent Library just might be my new favorite show & I feel no shame. My new goal is to be on it. #
• 20:12 Dear Diary, I can’t wait for the day my son is old enough to go outside alone & play, & I can stay in the house & mainline Draino. xoxo. #
• 21:18 The combined forces of Chooch & #thingieball just broke my knuckle, I think. #
• 21:37 Oh boy, that’s a positive. #phrasesthatcouldmakethistheworstdayever #
• 22:53 I’m grateful humans were built w/ the capability to summon shrill shrieks from voice boxes. Toddlers (or myself) just wouldn’t be the same. #
  

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• 09:34 My wrist feels like there’s a burning knife pressed against it & I’m freaking out. #
• 14:08 Maternity wards should hand out white flags as a consolation to new mothers. #
• 15:12 The Kennywood trolley has passed my house twice today, leaving a trail of calliope notes in its wake. TWO MORE DAYS! #
• 15:13 And now I can’t stop thinking about Calliope from Days of Our Lives, circa 1980s. She had a LIGHT UP WEDDING DRESS. She was my idol. #
• 16:50 I wish Henry was Trey Songz. Or at least the same age as him. #
• 17:07 Chooch: “What are u doing?” Me: “A dance I just created from sheer Awesome.” Chooch: “You’re blocking the TV” Who’s the 3year old, indeed #
• 18:54 Making Janna watch Silent Library & dying all over again. Watching someone eat a sweaty man’s spaghetti shoelaces never gets old. #
• 21:37 Janna was almost able 2 pee alone in my house for the 1st time in 4mths, but Chooch caught her in his peripheral as she crept up the steps. #
  

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• 13:51 Really need to learn how to delete speed dial entries so I can stop purse-dialing assholes I hate. God forbid they should think I care. #
• 14:01 Yes, roll up next to me in your car that’s vibrating with the basslines of Eminem. & if that didn’t impress me, an eyeful of ur boxers will #
• 14:37 Dear Etsy, thank you for providing me with adequate funds for a day at Kennywood, and also to feed my kid I guess. #
• 19:09 Chooch: “What’s a rainbow?” Henry: “Something in the sky, or if it was on @saucalisha’s car, it would be on the bumper.” She didn’t deny it  #
• 19:12 So I guess now that Chooch wears underwear, he’s too big to give his mother a kiss goodbye. #
• 21:50 Two aversions I’ve created for my son by shrieking excitedly: hockey & firecrackers. #
  

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• 00:41 Apparently Alisha doesn’t like my car-dancing which is just very sad to me. When I started choking she asked if it was on my whiteness. BURN #
• 09:48 Trying to convince Chooch that the Goblin King sings “Changes,” which is on the radio right now. He’s not buying it. #
• 10:34 Alisha requested that I take a valium before we go to Kennywood today but I couldn’t get a hold of my dealer. Owellzorz. #
• 14:31 Kennywood makes me feel bossy & militant, but there’s shit I need to do & everyone should follow w/o argument. #
• 14:42 Alisha & Blake are abusive. I’m crying. On the inside. #
• 14:42 I hate them. #
• 14:55 twitpic.com/80zql – All of Henry’s shirts should be this cool. #
• 15:59 Blake gleefully enjoying an afternoon jaunt upon a merry-go-round (after putting much thought into which horse to pick) is making me LOL. #
• 18:26 We’re eating Potato Patch fries next to speakers pumping out frenetic techno & in my head this is a fry-eating video game & I’m on Level 2. #
• 18:31 twitpic.com/81rtt – Oh shiiiiiiiiii—it’s about to get all a’juggle up in here #
• 18:36 Asked Alisha if my new juggle-lover dropped a ball on purpose, she ANGRILY said “I’m not watching” b/c she’s against the juggling of objects #
• 18:37 I want this guy to juggle Henry’s ballsack. Consider it a Father’s Day gift, you know? #
• 18:47 Ok srsly me and this juggler need to get in my bed. Preferrably without Henry, but that could be fun if Henry didn’t get all needy. #
• 21:34 Henry’s happy watching other people be happy. This is baffling to me. #
• 10:09 I left my voice at Kennywood. Henry will cheer. #

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The second week of potty training proved quite fruitful once we implemented a sticker reward chart. The first week I stupidly offered all kinds of extravagant rewards, such as ice cream for breakfast and a trip to the titty bar, to lure Chooch’s urine into the potty. Who knew stickers was all it would take.

The last few days, he’s been aware enough of his bodily functions to slip out of his Pull-Ups in time to drain his juice out on the pot, and today he’s officially graduated to underroos. He loves them, but did not love the sensation of dropping a deuce inside of them. Perhaps now he’ll understand the rewards of POOPING on the potty, too. He wasn’t too ashamed to run into the backyard and tell our neighbor Toya that “I pooped in my underroos and dropped it on the floor!” to which she hesitantly replied, “Okay, wow!”

Thank god Henry was here to clean that shit up.

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(Evidently I’m into oceanic shit these days, but these things are just very cathartic to paint.)

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Deborah and Dolores were best friends. They braided each other’s tentacles on their wedding days, sedated each other during child birth, and held a joint murder party down behind the sunken pirate ship when they found out their husbands were cheating with the electric eel twins.

They probably would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for Deborah, who floated back to town with the fishing spear still strangleheld by three of her tentacles, looking like a crime scene Christmas tree, tinsel’d with the slimy entrails of her husband and crowned with the pierced eyeball of Dolores’s.

And then there was Dolores, her eyes darting so rapidly that she lost her ability to float without crashing into rocks and ricocheting off bottomfeeders. They tried to have a normal lunch together, like two upstanding citizens, but when the hostess informed them that there was a twenty minute wait and asked for the name of their party, Dolores blurted out “GUILTY” just as Deborah noticed that she was still wearing a ski mask flecked with brain matter.

Some might say that being in a stuck in a surf stockade would be the worst thing since the creation of American Idol, but for Dolores and Deborah, knowing that their husbands would never again dangle their dongs to other women was worth every luxury they would no longer know.

Besides, they realized that all those years of checking each other for lumps had sparked a latent romance, and you better believe they took advantage of all their newfound privacy and phallic pieces of igneous sea rock.

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Earth-shattering updates throughout the day, brought to you by Tart-Tits. Please try to continue breathing while taking it all in.

• 01:19 I’ve bribed my kid w/ toys, DVDs, playground trips & ice cream for breakfast, but what got him to use the potty is a fucking sticker chart. #
• 01:55 I want Hoobastank to break up so I can call them Hoobastunk. Then hopefully Theory of a Dead Man will follow & I’ll call them Wait, Who? #
• 01:58 Obv I’m using “alternative” radio to lull me. How’s that working, u didn’t ask? About as well as Henry’s back. #myboyfriendisold&icantsleep #
• 01:59 (If I had said “weener,” he’d have cried, you know.) #
• 10:08 You know what’s awesome for social anxiety? Going to a parade. #
• 11:31 After being ditched at St Square for 45min by my gallant boyfriend, we might get to catch 5 min of this parade. #
• 11:32 And I won’t lie – behind my Olson shades I was crying. #
• 11:35 Thank God for Tyrone the janitor & his pre-paid cell phone. #
• 11:47 Somehow we made it & I haven’t choked on my neuroses yet. #
• 12:08 Of course I would stand on top of a sewer. Would be weird if I didn’t. #
• 12:44 Totally in tears. #
• 19:22 Despite a container of black paint exploding on me &getting lost from Henry (I’m an incapable being, remember) today was pretty awesome #
• 19:32 I could have done without Chooch chanting “you mother fucker” for 10 non-stop minutes, though. He’s since been quieted by a zombie flick. #
• 20:16 RT @RhondaKibuk: I saw the Stanley Cup today. RT if you did too. #
  

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• 01:01 Henry claims he hears crying & is walking around turning off fans & radios to hear better inside his imagination. #myboyfriendishaunted #
• 09:54 Chooch, upon seeing a picture of himself on the computer: “Look at THAT jackass.” #
• 14:04 Henry & I are playing the “Who Wanted to Break Up First” game & my teeth hurt. #
• 14:11 And then I corrected his incorrect use of your/you’re so he quit playing. #
• 20:24 Have convinced Chooch my hair’s to be shorn into a teal-hued faux-hawk tmrw & he’s flipping out. “NO! No no no!That’s just DUMB!” he cried. #
• 20:26 He’s begging me in high octave, “Mommy don’t do it, plz don’t do it” which I will add to the list of Things That Make By Passers Go WTF. #
• 00:06 I’m going to Kennywood on Sunday (local amusement park) & I CAN’T FUCKING SLEEP I’M SO EXCITED BITCH OMG. It’s like Xmas Eve every time. #
  

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• 09:42 Remember when I campaigned to get the school cafeteria to stop doling out tomatoes infused with scorpion DNA? #
• 09:43 Shit, never mind. That was Emma from Degrassi. I didn’t care enough to make a difference. #
• 10:08 A rape flashback was never so brutal. (-LY HILARIOUS.) #
• 14:01 It’s nice to know that if I try to do something nice for myself, after being stuck in the house 24-7 with Damien, I’m being selfish. #

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It wouldn’t have seemed right not to go, so Henry came home a little early on Monday and by 10:30am we were en route to the Penguins Victory Parade downtown. Now, I live a 5-minute’s drive from downtown, so I suggested that we just take the trolley, which is within a few blocks from our house. But Henry, good ol’ Henry, he’s all, “Oh no no no, we’ll drive and park at Station Square (which is right across from the river from town and has several parking lots) that way you can just drop me off at work after the parade.”

Immediately I was leery of this great plan.

We reached Station Square and, naturally, were met with gridlocked traffic because of course every fucking person outside of the city limits swarms en masse like fucking Syrian locusts looking for a parking spot to plague. (Just remember who suggested taking the trolley.)

We crawled ahead a few feet in five minutes,  and it occured to me to ask, “You have money to park, right?”

“No.”

Let me reiterate that for the few people who might think Henry is actually smart: He said no.

OF COURSE HE DIDN’T BRING MONEY. Why should I have been surprised at all.

What happened next may seem like an accident but I’m convinced it was carefully plotted stratagem.

“Jump out and go to that ATM,” Henry ordered, pointing across the street.

“No one’s going anywhere, so don’t worry about me leaving,” he laughed, sweeping his hand out the window at all the cars idling ahead of us.

Funny how in the ONE MINUTE it took me to take out money, he was GONE. I’m not kidding. And where I had gotten out was right about where the road split, and then there were three different lot entrances he could have gone through.

I convinced myself not to panic and for the first minute I did really well. But after that, I sat on a retaining wall and cried behind my Mary-Kate sunglasses while throngs of excited Pens fans trampled past me, on their way to the parade that I just wasn’t destined to attend. I kept thinking I’d see Henry and Chooch amid one of these packs of fans, but they never emerged from any of the lots. I was four years old again, lost in the grocery store and all the faces looking down on me had the morphed and oblong faces of the kidnappers in my nightmares and I just knew the rest of my childhood was going to be spent in a moldy cellar eating stale crackers and Cheez-Whiz in front of a constant loop of American Gladiator reruns, if I was even that lucky.

Oh but I could just call Henry, IF ONLY I HAD MY PHONE. Which was in my purse. Which was in the car.

I WAS OMG LOST I’M GOING TO DIE. And scared. And pathetic. My future was looking grim, like I would never reunite with my family and left to my own devices, how would I ever survive long enough to make it home? I had a twenty in my pocket but if I came upon a panhandler, you just know I’d be guilted into buying that bastard a Big Mac, Hustler, and a jug of Old Crow.

So I sat there, on that wall, hugging my knees to my chest and feeling desperate and completely sorry for myself, and I even heard myself whimper once or sixteen times. And then I thought, “Jesus Christ, did I just whimper in real life?”

It took me twenty-minutes to find someone willing to let me use their phone. His name was Tyrone and he was a janitor who literally LEANED BACK and slid his glasses down so he could ogle my tits while I was trying to locate Henry.

“Your man LEFT YOU?” he asked when I handed the phone back, clucking his tongue to illustrate just how appalling this was to him.

Look Tyrone, NOT ON THIS DAY, my friend. I thanked him, shook his hand (he held his grasp a little too long and I was honestly bouncing on the balls of my feet because hello, I was about to miss this fucking parade. I had to walk in the opposite direction to meet Henry and Chooch. They were relegated to a lot a good half mile away from where I was with Tyrone, and Henry needed the cash I took out so he could get his license back from the lot attendant who was leaving soon.

I ran as fast my boobs, sans sports bra, would allow me, and when I finally met up with those two assholes, I yelled, “Do you know how scary it is being lost???” to which Henry replied, “Um, you’re an ADULT.”

Yeah, adults go missing too, asshole. I was practically a sitting duck back there, any serial rapist could have dumped a burlap sack over me and THEN WHAT. My body becomes a penis cozy, that’s what.

To summarize what happened next – Chooch was being an asshole, Henry was being slow, and I lost my fucking temper on a walkway next to the RIVER, and I hate the RIVER. I hate a clusterfuck. I mean, who doesn’t. And it was about a second away from defeating me. I was ready to go home. I was sick of ambling around that fucking parking lot with no direction and I took this plastic snack bowl of Chooch’s and whaled it against the pavement, screamed “FUCK” in several different contexts, and demanded Henry take me home. Seriously, Henry had parked so far away that there wasn’t a soul around to hear my moment of crazy lady anguish. But Henry got that hissed tone of his and goes, “I am NOT going home after making it this far, we’re going to this fucking parade.”

We eventually caught up with the rest of the last-minute stragglers, walked across the Smithfield Street Bridge, which of course made me convulse and re-eat my breakfast, and somehow, someway, found a really nice spot right on the parade route that wasn’t clogged with gyrating and sweaty fans fifteen-heads deep.

And all the frustrating pratfalls of that morning became worth it as soon as the parade started and I found myself crying again, but in a good way this time.

Seriously. Mario Lemieux.

Typically, I’d have found 1,000 people to hate in one minute flat on any other day, but on Monday I loved everyone. (Not Henry, though.)

Hossa: Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

You guys! Billy Guerin, you guys! You guys OMG!

Three of my faves, one truck: ORPIK!!, Cooke, and Sykora. I cried.

Malkin was the only one I couldn’t get a good shot of, because every girl started boinging up and down with thrusted boobs, waving their ring fingers frantically. I may or may not have been apart of that.

Oh hello, best hockey player in the world. Fleury was on the other side of him.

I want so badly for Jessi to have this shirt, and to always stand in that exact pose while she’s wearing it.

These were set off as we were making the long trek back to the car.

Henry told Chooch they were day fireworks, but Chooch heard it as “gay” fireworks, so that’s all he’s been talking about. “Mommy, remember when we saw the gay fireworks?” And then I have so many things I want to say to that but there’s only so much a three-year-old’s mind can handle.

More pictures (and larger sizes) here. 

(We may be the “City of Champions,” but I still don’t like the Steelers. Except when they’re playing the Bengals.)

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“I haven’t seen you in five months.”

A swish of a tentacle, a tug at the collar.

“But were you even looking?”

Eyes to the side, up to the water’s rippling skin, back to the side again.

“Where did you go?”

A tentacular twirl of marigenous wrack.

“To my mother’s.”

A memory of a lavender-shingled cove near an acreage of coral.

“Are you still angry about that night?”

A pregnant pause sagging under the weight of a sextet of awkward moments.

“You know I didn’t want to go there with you.”

A brain being racked for piteous excuses.

“It’s not rape if you yell  ‘surprise!'”

The sound of a pin plunking to the ocean floor.

“I didn’t yell ‘surprise!'”

And when he buoyed there, silently entombed in his guilt, she continued, “And neither did you.”

An indignant scoff, swaddled in algal phlegm, bubbled from his throat’s depths.

“Yes, I did. I totally yelled ‘surprise!’ right after I stuck my finger in your—“

A horrified interruption by her.

“No! No, you didn’t. You thanked me for being a double-D and then you left me in the trunk of that sunken Fiat.”

“Oh. Well anyway, it was great to see you.”

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A NOTE: I was telling  Henry about this one yesterday.

“And it’s kind of like ocean creatures of sorts, so maybe it will have a more mainstream appeal.” Henry agreed with this, and I continued. ” Except the story that goes with it is about rape.”

And Henry threw up his arms in exasperation. “That’s where you lose people, with your stupid stories.”

And he’s probably right, but I can’t help myself. It’s like a sickness and the art just feels naked without the words. But for the record, people can opt out of my “stupid” stories upon request. I’ll only cry for a few hours, then I’ll smack myself in the face with an iron dustpan and move on.

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I woke up Saturday feeling all sorts of socially anxious and testy. Nothing in particular happened, but I had a long week of potty-training and I think that combined with my usual stressors set off some sort of synaptical brush fire which desperately begged to be doused with wine. So I canceled all of my weekend plans and tried to shut off my brain.

Sunday morning, Henry suggested that I spend some time alone, since my biggest gripe is, “I NEVER GET ANY TIME ALONE, MOTHERFUCKER.” He whisked Chooch off and I did some shit on the computer, watched some embarrassing reality TV (seeing Hulk Hogan cry is even a little awkward for ME), and I modeled some clothes for the cats. Their stares were blank and peppered with undulating question marks.

I lasted three hours. No, two and a half. And then I was fidgeting and sick of being in the house and absolutely itching for something, anything, to do. Stewing in a mindless muck on the couch does not become me. Henry and Chooch were summoned home, and we went for a little Sunday drive thing.

We ended up in some country-ghetto park out near Ambridge, PA. All the roads had clumbs of weeds ripping through the cracked asphalt and I’m fairly certain it is THE PERFECT place to don a letterman jacket and rape a bitch and I kept getting little chills molesting my spine, up and down and all around.

We found an isolated pavilion that had a rusty, rainbow-painted swing set and a SEESAW which I swear to God I haven’t seen a see saw in fucking ten years. I begged Henry to ‘saw with me and as soon as he had me in the air, I mean THE VERY SECOND my feet lost their position on the earth, I was in hysterics and screamed loudly, “PUT ME DOWN PUT ME THE FUCK DOWN I’M GONNA DIE PUT ME THE FUCK DOWN I JUST PEED.”

There were several chained off, overgrown roads that were surrounded on both sides by dark woods nd practically calling out to us to uncover the murders that have happened out there. I kept voicing scenarios out loud, forcing Henry to constantly remind me that our three-year-old was with us but really it was because I was unnerving him.

I totally can’t remember the name of this sad park, but I would like to be having my birthday party there. My Simulated Murder Birthday Party. I guess that will be next year’s big fete. Oh boy.

I like the outdoors, but only for a few minutes because then wildlife things start making my nose itch and I thought I kept hearing a chainsaw firing up in the near distance. I mean, I let out a blood-curdling cry that would rival that of any Scream Queen’s because a chipmunk poked his nose out from the bottom of a collection of wildflowers we were walking next to. A CHIPMUNK, not Leatherface.

But Chooch, he would live among milkweed (Henry just taught me that!!#@!) and jagger bushes if we let him. He’s probably going to want to go camping at some point. I hate camping (I’ve never been camping, but I just know that I will hate it). So then Henry will be all, “Here son, I’ll take you camping and we can leave Mommy at home to bake bread and darn our socks” and I’ll be damned if they’re going to go someplace alone where the possibility that they’ll talk about me is VERY REAL. I will start thinking now of ways to sabotage their camping trips. Those fuckers.

Then we left and Henry bought me Gobstoppers, even though I wanted Jawbreakers but he was all, “I haven’t seen real Jawbreakers in stores in a long time” and I said, “Bitch, then you best walk your elderly ass into a movie theater, mother fucker” but he laughed because apparently he thought I was joking.

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Earth-shattering updates throughout the day, brought to you by Tart-Tits. Please try to continue breathing while taking it all in.

• 14:45 Now that I know that Annie from 90210 was on Degrassi, it all makes so much sense. #
• 22:20 Honest to shit, I’m too scared to tweet. #
• 22:22 Slowest moving clock. Ever. In history. #
• 22:42 BOW DOWN, HATERS. #letsgopens #
• 22:44 That was COMPLETELY worth missing the @craigeryowens show. TOTALLY & COMPLETELY. #
• 23:12 Chooch has just now forgiven me for sending him into emotional duress with my hysterical screams, & then he joined me outside to scream. #
• 23:23 Geno: “Hi.” *swig of bubbly* = my fave moment. #
  

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• 00:28 Henry’s talking like a stroke victim again. #myboyfriendisold #
• 00:31 Think back to when you sat next to Grandpa, watching TV & enduring his laboring, open-mouthed breathing. #myboyfriendisold #
• 02:58 I used to see Capn Crunch on the ceiling of my last apartment. I’d pray to him, vent on him, ask him if my tits looked good in my new bra. #
• 10:50 I have this nagging itch to have Chooch watch “Delicatessen” today. I believe a fear of French cinema & cannibalistic deli phobia should start at a young age #
• 12:41 I have three mths to grow my nails back. #
• 13:21 Chooch, exasperatedly: “I’m buying a babysitter for daddy.” #
• 13:22 And I’m fine with that as long as she’s at least 75-years-old with a cleft palate and cankles. #
• 13:37 RT @BreakingNews: A French man was killed when a sudden gust of wind blew away a beach parasol and pierced through his head. #
• 13:38 @skyspun WEIRD because I also had that for lunch! (Eggplant casserole, not cankles.) #
• 13:43 @skyspun I’ve always been partial to marinated love handles, myself. With a canker sore garnish. #
• 14:06 Henry was going to get “Lexington” as his ringtone for me, but then remembered he doesn’t like me. Oh, that man. #myboyfriendisold&douchey #
• 14:20 @skyspun only douches drop the “e” #
• 20:02 My name is Erin, and I never fail to astound myself. #
  

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• 10:29 You know in cartoons, when someone sneezes hard & the roof of the house is blasted off? #myboyfriendisold&sneezeslikeacartoon #
• 11:05 I’m spending some time alone today, on Papa Henry’s orders, else I explode. I haven’t had time to myself in so long that I feel helpless. #
• 13:34 Jawbreakers, I don’t like the yellow ones, just in case anyone was planning on making me a hard candy gift basket for absolutely no reason. #
• 13:35 And now @saucalisha is going to gift me with a hobo’s sockful of yellow Jawbreakers, I can feel it. #
• 17:22 Wanted: 4 to 5 men in suits who aren’t afraid to get a little bloody. #
• 20:00 I’m building a lemonade stand & hiring zombies as vendors. It’s going 2b great, as soon as I learn basic carpentry. Fuckit, I’ll use boxes. #

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