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

• 15:35 It’s not often I slide a piece of pie across the table for someone else to eat, after one bite. Fuck you, Ree’s Family Restaurant. #
• 16:56 Sometimes? HENRY HOLDS MY HAND. brizzly.com/pic/20Z4 #
• 17:27 Hay! If you’re having a super great day & want to make it terrible, just take it to Henry. He’ll shit all over it for you. No more smiles! #
• 18:42 Chooch: What’s a mullet? [Listens to my explanation] I want it. %^^%@&$@!!??&@ #
• 19:13 Hopefully Sidney Crosby gets a hat trick tonight, else the Jehovahs Witnes I slaughtered for the spell was all in vain. #pens #
• 20:10 I love you, Matt Cooke!! #NHL #pens #
• 20:24 Godard/Boulton fight was fucking stellar, I cheered so loud. I LOVE HOCKEY. #NHL #pens. #
• 21:36 Are we honestly going to get shut out by the fucking Thr ashers? #
• 22:15 Wrote this on the wall at Henry’s job. Can’t stop laughing. Nightcap of easy amusement? Don’t mind if I do. brizzly.com/pic/212D #
• 22:20 I tell Chooch to run; Henry tells him to walk. We are parentally in sync, obviously. #
• ***
• 10:48 I’ve been trying to get Henry to like Circa Survive for 4 years now. I’m starting to think he’s purposely being contrary. Bastard. #
• 11:45 I don’t know why exactly I’m so upset that Dixie Carter bit it. #
• 12:39 The sad thing is, I might actually like some of Justin Bieber’s songs if they were sung by someone legit. Like Tiny Tim. #
• 12:48 Just caught Chooch lip-synching to Adam Lambert. Upon realizing he was caught, Chooch spat, “He’s a bitch.” Way to play it off, son. #
• 14:37 Am deeply saddened that I don’t have any Bone Thugs n Harmony in the car to listen to while Henry is grocery shopping. Mo’ murda f’realz. #
• 15:06 Evans City Cemetery & a Joke of a Pie bit.ly/dBFAAE #
• 16:51 Springtime means scrolling past a plethora of ubiquitous floral shots on flickr. If I’ve seen one flower, I’ve seen ’em all. #
• 17:19 Hi! I can’t wait for Henry to get his own hockey team so he can stop coaching the Penguins from the couch. #NHL #
• 17:25 Godard of all players scores! Everyone’s gonna score tonight but Crosby, watch. COME ON, SID!! #pens #NHL #
• 17:43 SIDNEY CROSBY GETS 50TH GOAL FOR REALZ THIS TIME!!!! I’M PROUD LIKE HIS MOMMY! #NHL #pens #
• 18:59 Today rules! Sidney Crosby bests Ovechkin in goals scored and my boyfriend Phil Mickelson wins the Masters! #NHL #golfthings #
• 19:55 That was one of the most exciting hockey games I’ve seen all season. #pens #isles #
• 20:09 I hope Ovechkin is SICK right now. #
• 22:04 I don’t hate nature, Henry. Just the Amazon. Alaska. Oceans. Ocean floors. Glaciers. Rivers. Ice on rivers. Mud. #
• 22:06 I also really REALLY hate outer space. Like, so much it makes my stomach hurt and I feel dizzy. Stop telling me shit about it, NASA! #
• ***
• 09:13 When the Senators lose to the #Pens in the 1st round of the playoffs, will Carrie Underwood write some shitty country song about it? #NHL #
• 09:42 Damn you, now I’m crying too! RT @skyspun: This commercial made me cry. It’s just really moving to me… bit.ly/dx1zXr #
• 11:19 I’m so glad Brothers & Sisters was 2 hours long last night because I really needed to cry twice as much. #
• 15:31 Do not even get me started on Ben Roethlisberger. But if you wanna bring his jock over here, I have many pairs of sharp-heeled shoes. #
• 20:05 Would suck a dick, maybe even yours, for a date milkshake right now. #
• ***
• 14:34 Not with it today. #
• 14:49 I have heart palpitations all day long, courtesy of my child. The 5 hours I spend each nite at work is my only stress-free time. FUNNY. #
• 15:55 Oh good, because I haven’t had a cop story to tell in awhile. #
• 18:10 Welp. My finger’s still broken. Not to be confused with my donger, which is what i typed 3x previously. #
• 18:39 Put Chooch in the corner where he belongs. brizzly.com/pic/2267 #
• 21:26 Henry’s making me a date shake, about fucking time. I’ve only wanted one since YESTERDAY, goddamn him. #
• 21:39 Hello Henry!! I can’t hear my shows over the blender!! Jesus, learn some courtesy. #
• ***
• 10:23 Today’s Obvious Statement: Cops Are Dicks // www.ohhonestlyerin.com/archives/4645 #
• 10:40 I had a dream that Henry & I were at some store that was going out of business & he bought me some hockey DVDs; I was so happy I cried. #
• 10:47 Chooch is one more asshole-move away from not having a birthday party. We need Janna, the Chooch Whisperer. #
• 12:02 To say I’m excited for the start of the #StanleyCup playoffs tonight is like saying whores enjoy fucking. #
• 12:58 Henry and I are fighting because I said I’d rather eat a human than an animal. Clearly he’ll have to be my first. #
• 13:20 Our waitress at IHOP is super hardcore knowledable about the pancakes here. I bet she has IHOP Lyfer tattooed on her breast. #
• 13:21 Ive never been more afraid of ordering incorrectly. Or forgetting that her name is Nicole, which she’s reminded us 12x already. #
• 13:45 Chooch wants the waitress’s brains. brizzly.com/pic/22IB #
• 14:04 Chooch just asked if he could take the IHOP knife home. #
• 15:20 Another Reason Henry & I Differ // bit.ly/9FuAiK #
• 18:29 Ruffles make me feel regal. brizzly.com/pic/22M3 #
• 19:20 MALKINNNNN!!!! #letsgopens #stanleycup #
• 19:52 Fuck that period. #pens #StanleyCup #
• 22:25 My first collaboration with Chooch! // Zombie note card set by noncomposcards on Etsy bit.ly/dlQgIj #
• 23:46 So far, on Fresh Meat II, I have my hate gun pointed at Laurel. Not only is she an Amazon cunt, but I bet she’s a Red Wings fan too. #
• ***
• 10:02 There’s an unseen bird of some sort living on the neighbor’s roof. I think it’s an owl; Henry says dove. Now he wants to call Bindi Irwin. #
• 12:41 Jesus Christ will always look like him, RIP Peter Steele. :( bit.ly/9UXmRq #
• 13:24 Dropped off a bunch of art at Wildcard today; wish I could have dropped off Chooch, too. Fuck motherhood. #
• 13:52 Is Blake Lively as dead-behind-the-eyes in her other roles as she is as Serena on Gossip Girl? When she says “I love you,” I don’t buy it! #
• 18:11 One of the analysts noticed my pics of Chooch & stopped to have a lengthy photography chat. Made my day. #
• 18:16 I like it when people recognize that I don’t always suck. Except when I’m sucking. Don’t stand too close, else you catch my profoundness. #
• 18:20 Would be fantastic if the #Habs took out the #Caps in the 1st round…that’s replacing my usual fantasy of eating grilled cheeses w/ Alf. #
• 18:42 Poop & Worms, & How They Apply To Henry // www.ohhonestlyerin.com/archives/4653 #
• 21:18 #Habs just had an impressive penalty kill, made me proud. Probably raised Boudreau’s blood pressure a lil’. #StanleyCup #
• 21:59 Hey quick! Someone divorce me and win custody of my kid. #
• 22:11 #HABS WIN IN OT! Ooooh, you just know Ovie’s caveman blood is boiling right now. #
• ***
• 00:25 While I appreciate Versus airing the Stanley Cup playoffs, I always have a hard time hearing the announcers on this channel. Cry for me. #
• 10:52 The new Circa Survive is…goosebumps galore.They always knows how to get under my skin in all the best possible ways. I can’t even… #
• 12:24 Chooch is #
• 12:25 ….posting my tweets before Im done typing them, apparently. #
• 12:29 Chooch just noticed the UPS truck outside & screame d “Maybe Andrea (@mrsevils) got me more toys!” She’s created a monster! #
• 12:57 Awesome! 1950’s Housewife is outside gardening in her peddle-pushers and reminding me that I’m not worthy of my vagina. Fucking bitch. #
• 18:08 If Henry was any kind of man, there’d be sushi waiting for me after work tonight. #
• 19:13 Maybe I shouldn’t listen to this game. #letsgopens? #
• 21:13 That’s the second time tonight I’ve thanked your god for Sidney Crosby. #Pens # StanleyCup #
• 21:25 Fuck all the Sidney Crosby haters. The dirty work he did for Letang to get that goal made my head spin. #LETSGOPENS!!!!! #
• 21:32 And that was NOT the last game played in the Igloo!!!! #pens #Stan leyCup #
• 23:22 Watching Cory Clouston admit that Crosby was the best player on the ice tonight was just the cherry on top of a sweet win. #StanleyCup #
• 23:44 I just scooped caviar with a Pringle out of the gutted cavity of a dead monk. No I didn’t. It was Melba toast. Sorry for fibbing. #
• ***
• 08:58 I don’t think I could have a baby with someone who wears Avenged Sevenfold shirts. #
• 13:05 Housecleaning is for pussies bit.ly/bpQt2M #
• 13:25 My god, housecleaning turns Henry into a bleeding vag. Meanwhile, I cleaned for 5 min. Taki ng my 60 min break now. #
• 13:28 Henry has some nerve, vacuuming while I’m trying to watch TV. He just moved the couch with me sitting on it. I guess we’re in the way. #

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The plan for today is to clean the entire house. There’s a realtor  who’s been trying unsuccessfully to show our house to prospective buyers (and by unsuccessfully, I  mean that we pointedly leave the house during the hours the showing is supposed to go down) but we have no choice but to let this play out, since whoever buys the property will be our future landlord. (Supposedly, and I don’t know if I believe it, they’re going to let everyone renew the leases. WE’LL SEE.)

So this is going to happen on Tuesday. Luckily, I’ll be at work. I think Henry should prepare a cheese plate and hand out snifters of brandy to maybe distract from the Sharpie wall-drawings and the hole in our bedroom wall. And the fact that we have four cats.

Anyway! I was just sitting here thinking about all the work that needs to be done, and my eyelids started to droop. Then I started to feel really stressed. So I called Henry, who ran out to get SUPPLIES for this cleaning thing we’re doing.

“Just thinking about cleaning is making me feel so exhausted,” I whined to him. Henry replied with that “I’m dating a spoiled brat” scoff that he patented back in 2002. “So here’s what I’m thinking,” I continued. “You can do all the cleaning and I’ll just stand there and talk to you, keep you company.”

This sounds like a foil-proof plan. I don’t know why anyone would turn that down.

Henry laughed, but I’m not sure it was because he thought it was funny.

No? You don’t like that idea, Henry? How about we just clean all of your shit right out of the house, you like that plan, douche bag?

Besides, there’s Stanley Cup playoff games to be watched today. Speaking of, Sidney Crosby is the best hockey player in the world.

EDIT: Henry is home from the store now. He was pulling plastic off some alien contraption.

“What the hell is that?” I asked.

“This is called a mop, Erin.”

Chooch will be FOUR (!!!) on April 25th so we’ve been all immersed in planning his birthday party. He’s still gung-ho about the zombie theme and I had big plans for the invitations. While I love my new job, there’s still that little bit of anxiety that comes with starting something new, and paired with the fact that I now have much less free time, the original invitation idea will have to wait for another year.

Instead, I thought it would be fun and simple if I just had Chooch draw a zombie. Then I scanned it, added an exposed brain, and digitally colored it. It was perfect, because my childish art skillz basically merge effortlessly with those of an actual child. It ended up being so cute and I was so proud of Chooch for his contribution, and we didn’t even butt heads! But it made me sad that only a few people would get to see it, so I changed the front to read “I want your brains” instead of “Chooch wants your brains,” and now they can double as note cards in case you want to send your pastor a note about last week’s sermon or tell your hair stylist that you’re cheating on her with the broad at Philip Pelusi.

Set of 5 on Etsy!

Earlier, one of the ladies here was talking about her dog Henry.

“Henry has some sort of worm. We’ve been giving him medicine for it; apparently it’s because he eats mice,” Cheryl said to Barb.

My back was to her, and I laughed quietly to myself, pretending she was talking about my Henry, imagining Henry with a limp Mickey clamped between his teeth and worms writhing out his asshole.

“Does Henry eat poop, too?” Barb asked, completely serious.

Now I’m sitting there, picturing Henry ferally hunched over in the backyard, shoveling his own piping hot feces in his mouth like it’s help yourself night at the Soup Kitchen, and it was all I could do not to laugh out loud while Cheryl was so obviously speaking about her dog in concerned tones.

Also, in my fantasy, Henry is wearing his SERVICE CLOTHES and rocking out bitchin’ingly to Judas Priest. A framed picture of the original Swedish Pippi Longstocking is in the background, slightly out of focus, but sharp enough to scare away bystanders with her gingerosity.

Thank you for joining me for this fun jaunt back to 5th grade.

Henry was just acting all aghast at the price of the sweater I’m wearing.

“You’re not a lawyer!” he yelled. Then, after a pause, he suggested, “Hey, maybe if you stay at your job long enough, you can go back to school and get a better position there.”

I laughed. “Um, no way. I see what those people do there all day and it looks bo-oooo-ring. I’d have no interest in that.” Basically, it seems they just do research all day, and I told Henry that when I was working at the Tina & Eleanore Company two years ago, there were instances where we were asked to do some light Internet research to make sure the records we were working on were correct.

“I mean, in the beginning, I humored them and did some Googling, but after two days of that tedium, I just pretended it was correct and then went on to the next record.”

Henry stared at me, like he so often does.

“I just don’t like working,” I continued, examining my pretty fingernails. “It’s kind of beneath me.”

And this is where Henry’s blank stare constricted into complete and utter disgust.

To get to my job, I have to drive through the Liberty Tunnels. For you lucky non-Pittsburgh folks, it’s a two-lane tunnel that takes you downtown, but every day at 2pm, the right lane becomes right-turn only. There’s even some orange traffic cones set up in an arc at the end in case people feel compelled to keep going straight and thereby causing a maybe pile-up. For the most part, this goes smoothly, but there are still the occasional assholes who like to speed all the way down the less-trafficked right lane only to slam on the brakes at the end and try to merge back over. For that reason, there’s usually a cop at the end of the tunnel, though he NEVER pulls any of the people over that I put window down to yell “That’s illegal!” too. I’m sorry, but I’m not trying to die in a tunnel car crash.

Henry has been driving me to work so I don’t have to lose 3/4 of my pay check to the parking lots. Plus, it’s just more convenient. For me.

Yesterday, we suffered through the slow-moving left lane, me re-playing the same song over and over, and him trying to act like he knows stuff about the world. Chooch was in the backseat watching inappropriate YouTube videos on Henry’s phone. Finally, the end of the tunnel appeared, and right as we were about to emerge into the overcast day, a barrel-chested, mustachioed prick of a cop clad in aviator sunglasses and a boulder on his shoulder stepped out in front of us, swooped his arm to the side and bellowed PULL OVER.

At first, I’m like, “Oh my god, there’s a terrorist on the roof on our car. Thank god this gentleman caught it before we drove this bomb into the city.”

Then I thought maybe we were the 1,000,000,000,000,000 car to make it through the tunnel without any collapsing incidents, and I wondered what sort of gift or cash prize we would get for that. I started thinking of my statement for the evening news but then laughed because my name is not Ben Roethlisberger.

The cop stomped over to the driver side window and when I tell you he hollered into the car for Henry’s license and registration, I really am not joking at all. Please, yell at us a little harder, I’d love for my four-year-old to be traumatized and scared of you pricks for the rest of his life, you mother fucker. You’re real cool. What’s wrong, got kicked out of the army in 1985 for fucking your bunk mate and now you have to take it out on poor demure families which is not what mine is, but still?

“What exactly is the problem?” Henry asked. We all had our seatbelts on, the tags were (miraculously) up to date, and there was no way we could have been speeding when we were practically crawling through the backed-up tunnel. And of course, all the drugs were stowed neatly up Chooch’s ass.

“Oh, like you’re going to try and tell me you weren’t weaving in and out of the lanes in there,” he said with snide laughter. I bet he smokes cigars. And I couldn’t imagine why he wasn’t marching around some barracks somewhere, whipping naked backsides and stepping on necks.

I don’t like cops, and I’m not afraid of cops. I have certainly never CRIED in front of a cop. If anything, I get extremely self-righteous around them and have this incredible desire to backtalk. So in tandem with Henry’s calm and collected objections, I plunged across his lap, shouting, “HE DIDN’T SWITCH LANES THAT’S ILLEGAL!”

And you know what this fucking douchebag  said to us? With contempt dripping off him like your grandma’s pearls, he sneered, “I don’t believe a word you’re saying, but I’ll let you back out into traffic.”

&^&^$%**(*$#@?????

Oh, but he was SO SURE we had gone all Fast and Furious in the tubes with our son in the backseat navigating. Only to just let us off the hook? And ew, the way his lip curled up into the most condescending half-smile, it gave me chills for the rest of the night.

He knew we didn’t do it, but god forbid he should break his Dickhead Cop Oath and admit that he might have pulled over the wrong car, sending us off on a positive note. And you know, we didn’t even notice any cars around us switching lanes, for that matter.

Meanwhile, Chooch didn’t even know we had been pulled over and had Beefy Bulldog’s steroid-coated false accusations wafting through our car.

As we drove across the Liberty Bridge, I laugh-yelled, “Well, those are your friends, Henry!” Because he is ALWAYS defending cops. ALWAYS. Yes, some are good, but I need to encounter at least 2 dozen more good ones before they can sway my opinion away from the hundreds of dickish ones I’ve encountered in my (very legal) days.

Henry started stammering some nonsense about how all cops are God-like, it’s just the ones on motorcycles that are mean.

OH OK. Erik Estrada was pretty awesome, but whatever.

I was having some major internal conflict that Saturday morning. Before Christina had come to Pittsburgh, the plan was that I would drive back to Cincinnati with her the following Saturday morning, spend the weekend there, and come back on Sunday. But, and this is so corny, in the three years that Henry and I had been dating, I had never spent a weekend away from him.

Who would cook for me? Who would pander to my every wish and demand?

Christina, apparently.

The ride to Cincinnati was fun. We listened to music, talked, laughed – a lot. We listened to the mix CD she brought with her, and her music was starting to grow on me. It was upbeat and happy, the perfect soundtrack for a car ride with a new friend. The good thing was that we were both very open to new music, so music became something we shared with each other, right from the start. And we both really liked The Used, I discovered; slowly, I was finding things we had in common.

Music was definitely the backbone of our friendship.

I remember sitting in the car, in front of train tracks, and asking, “Who sings this again?”

“Fall Out Boy,” Christina answered.

“I really like them!” Oh boy, what I was thinking? At least it was 2004, before they turned all-the-way lame. (OK, no – that didn’t make me feel better at all.)

That’s one of those vignettes that stands out so prominently in my mind, like it was just yesterday she was a passenger in my silver Sentra and my stomach, all these years later, automatically mimics the  reeling it was experiencing at the thought of spending a weekend in a stranger’s home. Isn’t it funny how one small, seemingly insignificant moment that was over quicker than Ben Roethlisberger targeting an underage co-ed can become so permanently etched in your memory.

Christina ranted a lot about Sylvia as we drove past plain Ohio scenery and frightening God-fearing billboards. This was when I learned that Sylvia had a forked-tongue, a hunch back, inverted nipples, and that Christina didn’t even like to kiss her. And I was expected to meet her that night, knowing all these intimate details about her body. Fantastic!

Christina lived in a townhouse with her mom and younger sister, Cynthia. I don’t like meeting people’s parents. I never have. I get uncomfortable and immediately lose about 90% of my personality. But luckily, her mom was at work, so I only had to deal with meeting Cynthia, Cynthia’s teen-mom friend Sammie, and the infamous Steve, who was laying on top of Cynthia’s bunk beds.

When he lifted his head to greet me, I took  in his pretty face and wondered what the hell he was doing clandestinely fucking Christina.

After Christina made me listen to a recording of her giving a spine-tingling sermon at some scary cult of a church (it was so frightening, I had to beg her to turn it off), we all got in the car and went to Jungle Jim’s, which is nothing more than a giant super market offering international goods along with your traditional American fare.  But Christina felt it was awesome enough to double as a tourist attraction, and I have to admit that Jungle Jim’s became one of the future perks of visiting her. I bought some medieval weapon of a fruit called a durian and it became a Really Big Deal, the definitive highlight of the trip.

Meanwhile, as we caroused the aisles with me pointing and oohing at the international sundry, tension was brewing. Apparently, Sammie was getting too close to Steve, and Christina was on the verge of having a Jerry Springer meltdown, because bitch, that’s HER man.

“None of us even like her,” Christina explained. “But she’s just always around.” I didn’t like her much either, to be honest, but she was easy to ignore.

The more time I spent around Steve, though, the more gay he seemed to me, so I wondered if Christina’s jealousy was all for naught anyway.

(And yes, Steve wound up being gay, but I’m sure Christina already knew that.)

Guess who was waiting for us back at Christina’s house? OMG, SYLVIA! She was oozing possessiveness, insane jealousy, and boiled rabbits all over Christina’s couch like a ginger Jabba the Hut. The introduction was awkward, fake. I have never felt more sized up, like a bloody cow carcass hanging from a meat hook. Sylvia had this high-pitched baby voice and I knew immediately there was nothing either of us was going to have in common. In Christina’s room, Sylvia and Steve lounged on her bed, texting each other back and forth, behind my back, laughing raucously every so often.

Welcome to Ohio, Erin! Just like being back in high school and hearing assholes whisper about you at the next lunch table.

Those two never bothered to talk to me, really. Not that I wanted them too, but it maybe would have made for less awkward intervals when Christina would leave the room.

I sat at Christina’s desk, with my back to Sylvia, Steve and Sammie, while Christina ran around like a wild woman trying to entertain/impress/wow me. She told me this secret about how she had met some girl, Amanda, online and for the past year had been leading Amanda on to believe that she was really a boy. “The name I use is Scotty Hotty,” she said, laughing. “And Amanda thinks we’re dating.

” Apparently, Amanda would call the house and have actual conversations with Christina, thinking the whole time that it was a boy, her boyfriend even.  That she had enough mental imbalance to pull off a deviant scheme like that for over a year should have made me grab my purse and run like hell. I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe because that asshole part of my brain thought it was funny. In that case, I deserved to get fucked over by her.

Christina’s sister, who was 18 at the time, was a little sycophant who apparently liked me almost as much as her sister did.

“Here, I drew you this picture,” Cynthia said, pushing a sheet of paper across the desk with such flourish that I expected to take in my hands a future inductee to the Louvre.

It was a crudely drawn house. I assumed it was crudely drawn on purpose, and decided to go along with it.

“Wow!” I patronized. “Very nice!”

Apparently, sarcasm wasn’t the proper tool to pull out of the shed, because Cynthia started to cry.

At first, I thought she was joking, so I laughed.

She began to then cry harder. She wound up crying so fucking hard that I actually thought she was laughing, so I started laughing too. Then she ran out of the room, the sound of things being slammed and broken followed in her wake. I was left sitting alone at the desk, frozen in incredulity.

“I’ll go talk to her!” Sylvia shouted, seizing the opportunity to be all large-and-in-charge, all the while reaffirming the unspoken fact that I was a bitch who pulled the trigger on Cynthia’s bi-polar laser gun. That a simple crayon-sketched house could birth A Scene was something that should have made me feel at home, since it was something of which I could see myself being on the other end. The other less-stable, tear-squirting, fist-flailing end.

But never had I felt more uncomfortable, unwanted, out of place. I glanced at the clock. It was after midnight. There would be next to no cars on the road. I could probably make it make to Pittsburgh in record time.

But Christina convinced me to stay. She assured me it wasn’t my fault, that sometimes Cynthia overreacts, that she was just trying too hard to impress me.

“I’ll take care of it,” Christina promised. “Please don’t leave.”

And so I sat there, shoulders scrunched up in anxiety, while Christina went off to diffuse the bomb that was Cynthia. While she was at it, she confronted Sylvia about the inhospitable way she had been treating me. She told me later that she screamed at her and told her, “Henry’s kids treated me with more respect than you’re giving Erin!”

You know how in some music videos, or movies, they’ll show a person sitting still in the center of a room, while a maelstrom of activity is unfolding around them, double-time? I feel that’s how it must have looked if I could have drifted out of my body. Maybe then I could have laughed about it, but instead I sat there, stock-still, thinking, “All these people around me are crying, when I’m the one who really wants to cry.

While Christina was talking Cynthia off the ledge, Sylvia came back into Christina’s room and offered me a mint from her Care Bears tin. I guess it was a peace offering but there was little sincerity backing it.

What it taught me was that Sylvia really liked Care Bears.

I tried to make conversation with her. I asked her what kind of music she liked. As expected, it was Top 40 garbage. “I’m trying to like the stuff Christina is into,” she said in that childish tone of hers. Christina told me later that she very emphatically did not want Sylvia to ever like the music she likes. I thought that was a pretty glaring indication of their incompatibility, because sharing music was always something I enjoyed doing with people I dated. (To the point where I will force it down Henry’s ear canals, like Ipecac for the shit he previously liked before meeting me.)

That weekend was still a part of the Great Pregnancy Scare of 2004, and after filling everyone in about the horrors of waiting for my period to hopefully stumble home, I launched into a neurotic monologue about how terrified I was of child birth.

This made Sammie, the resident baby-birther, flip out.  Kneeling very Regan-like on Christina’s bed, she started ranting about how I know nothing about what it’s like. “I HAVE A KID, I WOULD KNOW!” she shouted brattily. “I’m basically an expert!”

Yes, bravo. You had a baby when you were 16. Too bad MTV missed out on that one.

{Ed. Note: I’m not dogging on teen moms. Just teens who think they know everything.]

After everyone left that night, Christina and I sat on her bed while she cried. She felt horrible about the way I had been treated, and admitted her doubts that I’d still want to be friends.

“Yeah, everyone acted like psychotic indigents who have never been around another human being, but you were still nice to me, and that’s all that matter,” I assured her. She had gone out of her way to make sure I was as comfortable as possible, knowing that I was homesick and that I hadn’t slept without Henry in years. On her clock radio, she scrolled through the stations until she found soft rock. She knew that I liked to fall asleep to soft rock! She made sure I had two pillows. She checked repeatedly to see if I needed a drink. Cynthia, feeling badly for earlier, even brought me a cat stuffed animal.

“You can pretend it’s Marcy,” she explained. And it was kind of touching, that these two girls were trying so hard to make me feel like I was home.

Christina slept in Cynthia’s room, to alleviate any potentially awkward bed-sharing mishaps.

I didn’t sleep well. I missed Henry. I still felt awkward, and hurt by the way their friends had treated me.

The next morning, Christina took me back to Jungle Jim’s. I had planned on staying most of the afternoon, but I was homesick to the point of throwing up. All I could think about was Henry, what Henry was doing, if Henry missed me, what Henry was making that night for dinner.

As I got all of my stuff together, Christina cried a little. “Now that I’ve met you, I don’t want to let you go!” she said, trying to play it off like she was just being cute, but there was sadness in her eyes. It made me feel bad that I wasn’t as upset about leaving as she was about me leaving, and I won’t lie – it made me feel a little weird too, that someone who barely knew me could like me so much. But I just couldn’t hang around there any longer, so far out of my comfort zone. She asked if I would ever come back. I lied and said yes without hesitation, but the events of the night before were actually pretty traumatic for me, especially when I’m not very good with meeting people to begin with. I knew I definitely did not want to ever cross paths with Sylvia again.

Despite the social pandemonium that occurred in Christina’s bedroom that night, the beginning bricks of a friendship were laid that weekend; from sharing music and a mutual dislike for Sammie to cherry Coke at Big Boy’s and a stinky durian from Jungle Jim’s, the events of that weekend became the punchline of many inside jokes. Before I left, Christina gave me the mixed CD she made for her to trip to Pittsburgh and I listened to it the whole way home.

That night in my journal, I wrote:

While I loved spending time with Christina, I was eager to leave the next day. I did 85mph all the way through Ohio and made it home around 4:00. I was stuck to Henry like a magnet. We went to Giant Eagle and I literally could not get close enough to him. I never want to leave him again!

I cried, like I’m his mommy. MAYBE I WISH I WAS.

We decided to take Chooch to the Evans City Cemetery yesterday, where Night of the Living Dead was filmed (even though at least 5 cemeteries in the surrounding areas of Pittsburgh claim to hold that title). I think he was disappointed that there weren’t really any zombies there.

There was, however, a freshly buried body, and two old men hovering atop the loose earth who stared at us suspiciously across the way. I’m sure the locals just love getting visits from assholes like us.

They’re coming to get you, Barbara.

It was about as anticlimactic as you can probably imagine.

Afterward, I was hungry, so hungry; the kind of hunger that’s so intense, it devours any shred of patience and rationality that might still exist somewhere within my dark self, and I turn into the type of woman who might yank the steering wheel from the hands of the driver, causing the car to careen over a bridge into some disgusting river, if only to prove her point that dead bodies do exist beneath the filthy surface.

“How about Hank’s?” Henry suggested. “It’s Mexican.”

He made to pull into the lot and I yelled, “Um, I am NOT eating at a Mexican establishment named after some guy named HANK.” Then I saw that you ordered through a window and were expected to eat outside, at dirty picnic tables. (So maybe I wasn’t close enough to actually see the surfaces of the tables, but I just know. I just know.) “Oh and I am NOT eating outside,” I added, crossing my arms and scowling out the window. This is truth right here, not hyperbole.

“You know, I think you only do this shit to me,” Henry said, on his way to poutsville. “I bet when you’re out with other people, it’s never this hard to find a place to eat.”

At least three dozen traumatic food-finding scenarios with Christina flashed through my mind, but I said nothing.

“If you did this shit to Alisha,” Henry added. “she wouldn’t still be friends with you.

“

This is probably very true.

We settled on a stupid place called Ree’s Family Restaurant. It was bad enough the cheese wasn’t melted on my grilled cheese, but when you bring me a slice of blueberry pie and it’s been over-refridgerated to the point of coagulating into a pie-brick, and the crust tastes like the less-flavorful bastard offspring of one of those packaged Hostess pies, you can go choke on a dick, OK? It’s not often that I pass a piece of pie across the table after one fucking bite.

I should have just buried my food expectations in the Evans City Cemetery. Maybe they could make a cameo in the 8th remake of Night of the Living Dead.

6 comments

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

• 14:34 OMG! On the cusp of the 3 week anniversary, Chooch has finally removed the sock. #
• 14:36 Now that I’m employed, I’m gonna take Henry on a date to see #CircaSurvive next month. Fuck the rent! Priorities! #
• 16:51 The lights are off in every scene of Life Unexpected. Makes me wait 4 something scary to happen, like Lux menstruating from her mouth. #
• 17:36 Then on Life Unexpected, the electricity goes out & they have to act real hard like its something they’re not used to! Oh noes! #
• 17:40 “Raygun” is a word. Bitch. #
• 18:04 Chooch has much to learn about me. Such as: just because I’m a “mom” doesn’t mean I can peel an orange. Give it to Henry. #
• 19:22 If you live in/near Pittsburgh, go check out Wildcard in Lawrenceville. My art &pendants are sold there! (it’s still very surreal to me.) #
• 20:06 Henry just told Chooch he can go on True Life: I Got Nothing Because I Was Bad. I laughed a little. #
• 20:23 There’s a good possibility I’ve been drugged by Henry. I hope he at least dumps me in a frat house. #
• 20:53 Another boooooring #Devils game. #NHL #
• 20:56 Chooch, on dyeing Easter eggs: “Is Alisha gonna come? If she’s not, I’m gonna call her an asshole.” Ooh, Alisha! #
• 21:15 FUCK YES, TOEWS! GO BLACKHAWKS! Fuck the Devils! (But not THE Devil. He’s still my boy, yo.) #
• 21:19 Versteeg gets credit for the goal. I don’t care WHO it was, as long as that puck was behind Brodeur. #NHL #
• 21:30 Blackhawks win in shootout but Devils still able to tie with #Pens. Fuckers. Oh well, wine time. #
• ***
• 00:47 Hello. I have found myself suddenly drunk off one glass of wine. Livin large! #
• 10:04 This unseasonal weather is enhancing my post-workout puke session. I like it. #
• 11:38 Moved to tears by descriptions of grilled cheese. #
• 12:04 Oh man, I forgot how AWESOME it is to have a mouse in your house: Diary of a Future Animal Planet Star bit.ly/9baOiw #
• 13:19 Chris Chelios must be the most hardcore 48-year- old ever. My cousin used to date him, way back when he still had hair. #NHL #
• 14:33 We missed you, Malkin! #pens #
• 15:21 Homicide? Don’t mind if I do. #
• 15:48 Huge win for the #pens! En route to the Wheeling Nailers game; hopefully they win too. #
• 16:00 I hope there’s someone at my new job who can fill Tina’s shoes. My tweets/blog posts haven’t recovered since I left my job at MSA. #
• 16:29 If Henry and I liked each other, this might be considered one of those “date” things. #
• 16:38 My attempts to kill Henry keep getting foiled by him exclaiming, “I’m DRIVING.” #
• 17:06 If Henry didn’t waste time doing the speed limit & stopping to get GAS of all things, we might have been on time. But probably not. #
• 17:17 Henrys about to meet my sister lol. #
• 18:21 Henry missed the first goal (NAILERS) but doesn’t care because he’s drinking beer thru a straw. #
• 18:24 Cincinnati plays dirty. I am NOT surprised. #
• 18:38 I’m not staring at Henry. I’m just watching the game thru the reflection in his glasses. #
• 18:40 There are ppl here who have plastic Ricola horns and I want one to enhance my fandom. Henry frowned. #
• 18:49 The people in front of me kiss with open mouths. brizzly.com/pic/1Y4A #
• 18:59 How hard is it to get into the mascot industry? I want in & will obsess over that for awhile now. #
• 19:23 I just asked Henry what he thinks of my sister. “She’s like you,” he replied dryly. #
• 20:44 Wheeling Nailers just trounced the Crapinnati Shitclones and it was good. Jesus was next to us, rooting for Ohio. Oh, how he wept. #hockey #
• 21:57 I think my sister’s boyfriend thinks i’m retarded. #
• ***
• 02:27 Got my Easter basket. Now it’s time for bed. #
• 09:44 Chooch got a Pull Apart Zombie in his Easter basket. Candy has been temporarily eschewed. #
• 11:14 I don’t know how to yoyo. I had more expensive toys to play with when I was a kid. (Said that to Henry & he promptly puked.) #
• 12:17 Um. After 9 years, Henry doesn’t know how to pronounce my middle name? #
• 13:30 I’ve not once been intrigued enough to see what happens next on godaddy.com. Sorry, Danica. #
• 13:56 Ugh, just when Henry was starting to like them // RT @AltPress: Austin Carlile: “I quit Of Mice & Men” tinyurl.com/y9xfz9j #
• 15:05 When Henry invited me to play with the food he was making, I happily RSVPd. Too bad I didn’t pick up on the sarcasm. #
• 15:30 Big J’s Resurrection makes me work hard. Then I get tired & quit. brizzly.com/pic/1YIS #
• 20:36 Holidays are awesome because I get to emasculate Henry in front of family. And eat melted butter with small pieces of vegetables in it. #
• 21:33 Just got in a brawl about Maunday-Thursday and I WON. Who’s a religious wunderkind? ME. FUCK YEAH. #
• 21:38 I love remembering that I’m the best. #
• ***
• 00:44 I enjoy watching results shows when I already know the results. Makes me feel like God. Walk it out, Hype 5-0. #
• 08:44 Obligatory Easter Bunny Photo bit.ly/a6Ly5j #
• 12:28 Punched myself while exercising, broke my finger. HELPP. #
• 12:58 And it’s my ring finger I broke. Oh irony, what would I do without your foot up my ass. #
• 13:02 Chooch: “Which one is it, this one?” AS HE SQUEEZED MY FINGER & DOUBLE-BROKE IT. Maybe next, Henry can come home & de-bone it altogether. #
• 15:38 Henry said my finger isn’t broken, it’s overextended. Ok Dr Douchebag. In srs newz, I’m about to start my new job! With a broken finger! #
• 18:57 Quickly: I love my new job. #
• 21:50 I am NOT jerryrigging my finger, Henry! I want to go to the hospital & get a CAST. For elves to sign. #
• 21:55 Oh. And the woman I’m working with is the daughter of Jack Riley, the first GM of the Penguins. WTF I love my job. #
• 23:25 Literally the only thing keeping me from fully enjoying basketball is the squeak of shoes against the court. Can’t someone fix that for me? #
• ***
• 00:20 Honest to god my finger is a very zombie hue. It’s going to fall off, isn’t it. #
• 00:29 Henry tried to look at my finger; roof almost blew off the house. Then I asked for ice that isn’t so cold. (12 hrs later, just now icing) #
• 10:26 I’d like to send human shit to the person who came up with these latest KitKat commercials. KitKat: now synonymous with obnoxious. #
• 12:35 Ain’t nobody cutting the ring from my finger. Sure, it only cost $5 but I’ve been wearing it for 12 years! #
• 12:56 Maybe for the next KitKat spot, Miley Cyrus can put Bobcat Goldtwaith’s cock in her mouth while they both sing about breaking pieces off. #
• 14:40 Chooch has a cold; needs to go to hospital. brizzly.com/pic/1ZBN #
• 15:39 Chooch is in the backseat, sleeping beneath a monkey mask. #
• 15:40 brizzly.com/pic/1ZC9 #
• 20:22 For once, I have every right to be obsessed with a bathroom. #
• 21:30 I’m so glad I’m home for the 3rd period. GO #PENS!! #
• ***
• 00:40 Someone just whistled outside my window. Wish that was some euphemism for breezy cunnilingus, but alas. #fingerisbrokestill #
• 12:00 No bread, no cheese, no milk, no bonbons – what the fuck kind of housewife ARE you, Henry?? #
• 12:23 I wish Mindy White & Anthony Green sang EVERY song together. #
• 20:02 U know what’s boring? Hearing some grandma talk about the shit she made for her son’s wedding next week. It’s in Tennesee, if u want to go. #
• 20:49 Pretty much every 4 seconds I expect to get shot in a driveby. #
• 22:30 Yes my girlfriend Ev is on Fresh Meat 2, perfect timing as my seasonal lesbianism is due to kick in any day now!! #
• 23:25 I don’t care what people say – you really CAN choose your family. #
• 23:34 Gee, I wonder why there are so many hit s to my blog from Middletown and Cincinnati, Ohio. Weird. Except not. #
• ***
• 00:57 I wish my superpower was stuffing people with cheese, grilling them, & enjoying with a side of cole slaw. #
• 11:37 I’m glad Pittsburgh got the memo that it’s April, not August. #
• 14:54 The Christina Chronicles: The Big Meet, Part 1 www.ohhonestlyerin.com/archives/4604 #
• 18:09 Everyone here keeps telling me I’m doing a great job, like they’re afraid I’m going to quit. There’s chocolate here, I think I’ll stay. #
• 21:16 Deflection or not: SIDNEY FUCKING CROSBY!!!! #pens #
• 22:20 My face is wet. #pens #NHL #
• 23:14 The cats heard Chooch get out of bed and two of them are literally cowering behind me on the couch in anticipation of horror. #
• ***
• 11:16 To Chooch, I said, “Can’t you just act normal?” & then heard a symphony of various voices saying the same thing to me over the past 30 yrs. #
• 11:25 That new grilled cheese flavored mac&cheese is disgusting, and this time I don’t think my cooking influenced the shitty taste. #
• 15:15 Seventeen yrs later & I’m still hot for Paul Coffey, ok? #NHL #
• 22:31 Henry just gave me the “Great, she’s watching Degrassi” smirk. #
• ***
• 11:07 Just watching a bacon cheeseburger assembled with a grilled Krispy Kreme for a bun makes me want to order liposuction & stents for my heart #
• 11:34 Chooch hates having his tenses corrected. “I dont want to say shook! I want to say SHAKED!” Fine, talk like your father then!!! #
• 13:13 Reservoirs make me want to puke. #
• 13:58 Chooch’s zombie, appropriate ly placed in Evans City Cemetery brizzly.com/pic/20WQ #

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I don’t really know why, but I have always had this weird neurosis about public and work rest rooms. Not really in that I love to unload in them, but it’s more of an observational hang-up I have, I guess. You can tell a lot about a place by the rest rooms. (Which is why Target > Walmart.)

I especially like truck stop rest rooms because you never know what kind of savory souls you’ll run into there. Plus, pratfalls abound.

At my last job, the inside of each stall had bright pink notices reminding every bleeding female to deposit their menstrual armor in the provided “recepticles.” Every night, I considered taking a Sharpie and correcting the spelling. Maybe dotting the “i” with an ovary.

None were worse than the company I worked from 2006-2008, though. Just, ew.

I went from this, to this:

I can like that.

It was only inevitable that she’d want to meet one day. The Greyhound was scheduled to arrive on a Thursday evening in March of 2004, and I must have been excited for her arrival because in my journal that day at work, I wrote: Christina is coming. I’m excited.

The bus got to Pittsburgh before I was done with work, so I told her to walk down the street to Eide’s, which is one of my favorite music stores in all of the land. I figured there’d be enough for her to look at, plus it would give me a reason to have to go there. Not that I ever needed a reason.

Henry pulled up along the curb and waited in the car while I ran inside.

I saw her immediately. And was taken aback.

Friends, I know that sometimes people can be quite slick with their self-photography, but Christina was clearly a master magician, her medium being cleverly forgiving angles. I am not a shallow person. I have never been embarrassed to be seen with any of my friends. For Christ’s sake, I’ve been parading Henry all around town since 2001! But I guess there’s always an exception to everything because I felt my face grow warm and couldn’t stop thinking that she looked like a troll. That’s horrible, right? I just wasn’t prepared for this; I don’t know if I thought she was going to be taller? Would that have made a difference? She was concentrated into a squat stature and short tightly-curled brown hair framed her big duck-lipped face. I don’t really know how else to describe her, and the way I felt seeing her for the first time. I could extrapolate, but then I run the risk of sounding mean just for the sake of being mean.

Hugging her in the middle of the store, in front of the entire two customers, I instantly felt like an asshole for having that moment of superficiality. But still, I broke apart from her embrace and led her outside to the car, where I flashed Henry with a saucer-eyed look of alarm. I knew he was internally gloating, as he always did when one of my Internet meet-ups went awry.

Driving across the Liberty Bridge, Christina leaned between the seats and said, “Here. Put this on,” as she handed over a mix CD. It was full of emo, pop-punk, mostly stuff I didn’t listen to as I was in the throes of my pretentious indie/dance-punk/post-punk/no-wave phase.

“Fuck, we have nothing in common,” I realized.

We drove straight to Denny’s, as none of us had eaten dinner yet. Christina entertained with stories of the scandalous Greyhound underworld, while I inhaled my veggie burger.  I noticed that she didn’t do so much eating of her food, but pushed it around a lot on the plate, and then excused herself to go to the restroom. It was the first chance I got to ask Henry what he thought of her.

“She seems nice, very out-going,” he said with a mouthful of burger and semen. (No really, that’s the mayo in Henry’s land.)

“Yeah, she wasn’t quite what I was expecting visually-speaking, but she makes me feel comfortable. I like her,” I agreed, thinking that it was odd I wasn’t stuttering in front of her or using my fake Nice Erin voice. There was a vibe about her that disabled my social awkwardness and allowed me to behave the way I would around people I’ve known for years. And you know, not stiff and reserved like I tend to get around people for the first time.

While Henry slept that night, we stayed up late talking on the couch about everything, including painful childhood traumas. I found that, in person, she was just as easy to confide in as she was that night over the phone, only this time she shared extremely personal details with me as well. Eventually, she had tears streaming down her face. “I never talk about this shit with anyone,” she admitted.

“I feel like this isn’t the first time I’ve met her,” I wrote later in my journal.

***

Christina’s visit was smack in the middle of the Great Pregnancy Scare of ’04. While I was at work the next day, she took a walk around my neighborhood and bought me flowers at a local florist. Beneath the standard “Congratulations!” on the card, she had written “Hope you get your period!” A bouquet of flowers was not exactly what I was expecting to come home to that Friday, not from Henry and especially not from a girl. Henry didn’t seem very delighted by this, and left to pick up his sons, Blake and Robbie, who spent every other weekend with us at the time.

Sylvia evidently wasn’t very delighted either.  Her girlfriend (they were in their 16th go-around at this point) had run off to Pittsburgh to meet the strange blond chick she was always hitting on via LiveJournal comments. I asked Christina what the deal was with that, why Sylvia was so jealous.

“She thinks we’re going to make fun of her,” Christina said disgustedly, with an eye roll.

“Well, we have been.” And we laughed.

Christina had updated her LiveJournal while I was at work that day, stating that she had taken a walk “a la Gothic Carl.” (She was actually confusing Gothic Carl with Big Headed Gordon, who, during his visit, would leave my house surreptitiously to walk around the neighborhood;  I had told her about both of them the night before.)

And this is what Sylvia wrote in her’s:

Its hard because right now Christina is with “gothic
Carl” I am sure that it is not anyone but the fact
that she is with someone I have never heard of,
instead of me, makes me jealous. Is that so wrong? I
think it is. Some times I think she is just trying to
see if I get jealous. My bet is he is just one of
[Henry’s] kids or something. MAYBE it is the friend of
Erin’s that Christina told me about, that was going to
come over and meet her. But I would think that that
person was going to come over when she was there too.
Is Erin trying to hook Christina up with someone else?
What if Erin knows about her true feelings about me?

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What if Christina does not like me as much as I think
she is starting to? I need to stop. I know that
Christina cares and loves me. I know that no matter
what we will always be a friend even though that is
what Erin is trying to do. * Sighs*

This, after Christina had spent an hour talking – nay, swooning – about her younger sister’s friend Steve, how she was secretly in love with him and that’s how she knew she wasn’t a lesbian. That she and Steve would secretly fuck behind locked doors and once, her sister almost caught them.

That was the part about Christina that was frustrating, even back then. It was like she was so ashamed of herself, who she really was. She wasn’t yet to the point where she could look at herself in the mirror and say, “You know what, I like girls. It doesn’t define me. The end.” So she was constantly trying to convince everyone that even though she had this rag doll named Sylvia, she was completely hetero.

“Have you ever thought that maybe you’re bisexual?” I asked.

“No, I’m sure I’m straight. I’m in love with Steve.” She said it with such certainty, and we moved on from there. I’m nobody’s therapist and it didn’t affect me one way or the other. I don’t choose friends based on their sexual preferences, but I just wanted her to be OK with herself because it seemed to be a topic that came up every time we talked.

That night, things got light-hearted again when Janna and my brother Corey came over to meet Christina. Corey was going through this stage where he was obsessed with playing a didgeridoo so he brought that with him and performed for us. Only, no one was allowed to watch him play.

Since it was Christina’s first time in Pittsburgh, we took two cars to Mt. Washington: Henry and his kids in one; Janna, Christina, Corey and me in the other.

Mt. Washington is directly across the river from downtown river, providing the best unobstructed views of the skyline, bridges and Heinz Field if you’re into that football shit.

Plus, there are two inclines which is always fun for idiots like me to board and commence acting out a scene from the yet-to-be-written DoucheBag’s Big Day Out.

Typically, it’s me acting out while my friends are inching away, embarrassed to be associated with me. My giddiness is oftentimes confused with extreme public intoxication, resulting in Henry gripping my elbow and dragging me back to the car.

But instead of shying away from this behavior, Christina joined in. We didn’t realize it at the time, but this would wind up being her first of many gigs as my sidekick. And of course, Henry’s kids (who were only 10 and 12 at the time, I think) were acting a fool too, and Henry was so completely pissed off.

I wanted a group photo, so we all pushed and shoved each other, trying to position ourselves around some stupid memorial on one of the overlooks. Someone walked past and said to Henry, “Here, let me take that for you so you can get in the picture, too.”

“I’m not with them,” Henry muttered.

On the way back to the car, Christina performed for Henry’s kids and Corey one of the raps she had written. I wasn’t paying attention but Corey told me later that it was directed to a man, and it was about stealing his girlfriend from him.

Henry just came home from work with Wendy’s.

“Do you want this Frosty?” he asked.

“Uh, no,” I said snottily, because I often speak to him like I’m his sixteen-year-old daughter.

“I bought an extra one just so you wouldn’t scream YOU BOUGHT CHOOCH ONE AND NOT ME!” Henry mimicked.

He knows me so well, it’s sickening.

More observations from my first day at the new job:

My boss Deb took me all around and introduced me to everyone on the floor. That took nearly an hour, because most people wanted to actually chat and it was overwhelming because there was so much to take in, but at the same time, it made me feel wanted. None of the regular employees at my last job bothered to talk to the evening shift people, and the job before that one, I didn’t even have a desk. I’m definitely not treated like a temp at this place (and after 3 months, I won’t be!). Throughout the evening, random employees who I missed on my rounds with Deb actually came over on their own to introduce themselves. I’m not used to working at places at that.

My joining of the firm makes me Erin #3. There’s Boy Aaron and Girl Erin, and some of the people joked that they could call me Night Erin. “I like it,” I said, after considering it for a few seconds. “It makes me seem mysterious.” Like a madam, is what I wanted to say. “Anyway,” I added, “for four years at one of my jobs, I was referred to as The Girl, so I’ll take anything at this point.”

The woman I’m working with is Barb. She was one of the women who interviewed me and I liked her immediately. She’s in her fifties, very laid back and casual, and just gives off a good vibe. She’ll only be working until 5:30 but is staying late this week to help train me.

I had to sit at her desk last night since I don’t have access to their data program yet. While I did my work and she leafed through an Avon catalog, she asked, “Do you know if the Pirates won?”

“No, last I heard they were winning 3-2, but that was awhile ago.” Then I added, “I’m more of a hockey fan.”

She slapped down the Avon catalog and shouted, “Oh, me too! This is great, now I’ll have someone to talk to about the Penguins! Really, it’s just me and Derek who follow hockey, no one else here really cares.”

“Oh I know” I agreed.  “It’s all football, football, football everywhere you go!” Silently, I thanked your God for placing me in that office.

“I’ll be right back, I have to get something to show you!” Barb left to retrieve Derek, who was gifted a chocolate Stanley Cup for Easter.

“I’m debating whether or not to eat it,” he said. Derek reminds me of a cross between Kat Von D’s brother Michael and Fred Savage. I like him.

“You cannot eat that!” I yelled. “At least, not until after…”

“Yeah you’re right,” he said. “I might jinx the Penguins!”

He returned to his desk, and Barb and I continued talking. I told her about how Henry and I had just gone to a Nailers game over the weekend.

“Oh, I’ve been wanting to go to one of those games! Was it any good?” Then she asked me if I like the fighting. “The fighting is my favorite part,” she enthused. “My dad was the first general manager of the Penguins, back in the sixties, and he was totally against fighting,” she said, ever so casually.

@#$&^%*^$##@$#@!$

“You’re JACK RILEY’S DAUGHTER??” I heard myself say it, and it sounded like I was using a megaphone.

I work with Jack Riley’s daughter, are you fucking kidding me, I love this goddamn job.

Henry and I never go out. I think the last time was when we went to see Thrice back in November, and it was good until the end when some guy started pushing me and Henry acted like he knew nothing about it.

I had a pack of four tickets to a Wheeling Nailer’s game that I bought a few weeks ago from one of those “just pay half” sites, thinking it would be cool to double-date with my sister, since she lives in Wheeling and we both like hockey. Henry and I dropped Chooch off at his Aunt Kelly’s house (bless her!!!) on Saturday afternoon and for the first time in forever, spent time in the car without a loud-mouthed child screaming MOMMY!!!!! DADDY!!!! every two seconds and calling us bitches.

It was glorious. Except for the part where Henry donned the Professional Driver cap and began weaving and veering through back roads and I was so anxious, staring at the clock, knowing we weren’t going to be in Wheeling by the designated meeting time of 5:00pm.

He drives the SPEED LIMIT for Christ’s sake!

Other than that, I was doubled over with giddiness. It was practically a date! We were acting like a real couple! God, was it ever exciting. So exciting that I put on Of Mice and Men (the band, not the book) real loud and Henry started complaining when I kept tugging his arm up in a roof-raising motion, and then I thought it would be fun to try to kill him and he was shouting, “Hello, not while I’m DRIVING!”

Oh man, just like old times.

We were about ten minutes late, and my sister Amy and her boyfriend Dick were already waiting for us at River City, where we decided to meet for drinks because I hear that’s what grown people do. It was kind of awkward at first, mostly because of Henry’s social displacement, but once the beers (and my lame amaretto sour) arrived, everyone started loosening up and Henry began to be scared of the similarities shared by my sister and me. And I think Dick thought I was retarded, maybe?

My favorite part was when Dick asked Henry what he did for a living. Dick is a doctor so Henry, feeling inadequate,  mumbled something about working for a beverage company and I considered shouting, “HE PLAYS WITH FAYGO ALL DAY” but didn’t want to embarrass him. I mean, any more than he already is just by being my boyfriend.

Henry hated our waitress for not knowing anything about the beer on tap, and he went to the bar to look at the beer selection for himself. Then he told the bartender he hated the waitress. Then we got a new waitress! This one was trying unsuccessfully to cover a black eye with orange foundation. She made me feel uncomfortable, like I had an uncredited role in a Lifetime movie.

By the time we left to walk across the street to the arena, it seemed like everyone liked each other (except for Henry and me, but, well….duh) and I would have been more happy about that if I wasn’t busy panicking about redeeming our tickets. I get nervous about things like this! I’m tightly wound. When I slid the email confirmation printout under the glass at the will call booth, the man began asking me a torrent of questions, like: “Did you call the box office?” and “Did the box office call you?”

I was a nervous wreck. “No!” I answered to both questions. Was he going to tell us to leave? Would we have to work for the tickets? Because I might, MIGHT, give some oral for a ticket but no way am I mopping a floor.

Then he typed some stuff on his computer and handed me 4 tickets.

JUST LIKE THAT.

No one else seemed impressed or surprised. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting to happen, the gestapo to swarm from all sides, handcuff me and put me away for being violating some serious Wheeling ticket embargo by just paying half on some seedy illegitimate website created by scamming Nigerians.

Once we found our seats, Henry and Dick went off to do Men Things, like buy beer and clap each other on the back a lot. Meanwhile, I explained to Amy that the Nailers had to win that night, since they were playing my least favorite in the entire world, Cincinnati.

“That’s where Christina’s from,” I reminded her. “So there’s A LOT on the line for me.” I think she’s beginning to realize that every little thing in my life is OMG so DIRE, because she just let out a little laugh and said, “Oh, yeah that’s right.”

While Henry and Dick were getting beer, the game started. Literally twenty seconds into it, the Nailers scored. I gloated when Henry came back. (With beer in kids cups, no less.)

I hated the people in front of me. They kissed with open mouths. They were there with their kids! They probably all sleep in the same bed, too. Naked. It was awful to spectate.

Henry spent most of the game obsessing over the fact that the family in front of him belonged to Spike the Mascot. I’m surprised he didn’t send out numerous tweets about it. “You know how Spike came over and kissed that baby?” he asked in an excited hush. “That’s because it’s his DAUGHTER.” He looked so pleased with himself. I asked him how he found out and it was because he overheard the conversation the baby’s mom was having with the Jesus impersonator sitting next to us.

You’d have thought he called up Shane Donovan of the ISA (whaddup Days of Our Lives fans) and had a DNA test ran.

Throughout the game, I kept trying to be affectionate with Henry. In normal ways, like flicking his face and pounding his knee with my fist in lieu of clapping along to the “Let’s Go Nailers” chants. He kept pushing me away! Can you believe that.

In the second period, Crapinnati got a lucky goal and Jesus rose in jubilation. Figures Jesus would be rooting for a team that hails from Judas’s town.

And then I noticed there was an entire section full of Ohioans, hollering for their dumb team.

“What are they called, the FLAPPERS??” I asked Henry incredulously.

“No, retard. The Cyclones. How do you get Flappers from Cyclones?” Because people from Ohio don’t know how to cheer properly.

Anyway, the Nailers came back to score three unanswered goals, and Jesus wept. Happy Easter, asshole!

Apparently, the Nailers didn’t have a very good season (they didn’t even clinch a playoff berth) but you’d never be able to tell by the way they played during their last game of the season. Every three minutes, I had a new favorite player.  It was a great game and awesome to hang out with my sister again!

By the time we left though, I was starving, which meant it was time to fight with Henry. “You’re a fucking bitch when you’re hungry,” he yelled, and then we remembered we have a kid and had to go retrieve him.