When I came into work today, the first thing I noticed was that the wall of my work space finally says my name!

I don’t have to be “Patricia Weiss” anymore.

It was to the point where, if someone from another department walked by and said, “Hey Patricia,” I’d just mumble “Hey” back.

I’ll tell ya. Something as trivial as having my own goddamn name slapped on that pane of frosted glass has made me feel 1,000 times more at home here.

“I want you to sing,” Chooch said urgently.

Being the monkey that I am,  I threw out some “lalala”s and hoped that would pacify him enough to let me resume child negligence.

“No!” he argued. “I want you to sing while standing on a chair! And a piece of wood!”

I let this sink in for a few seconds before asking him if he meant a stage.

“Yes! I want you to sing on a stage.”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. Not ever,” I mumbled.

“Yes it is going to happen!” he fought, voice elevating an octave. A childish volley of ‘No I’m not‘s and ‘Yes you are‘s happened next.

“Why do you want me to sing on a stage?” I asked, always having suspicions when it comes to my kid.

“So I can yell BOOOOO!” he sneered.

What a fucking bully.

I didn’t know it then, but I was about three weeks pregnant at the time of this trip. It was originally posted…ew, exactly 5 years ago. And this day will come up later in The Christina Chronicles.

***

I haven’t been to an amusement park since we attempted to run amok at Six Flags in Ohio two years ago, with disastrous results. See, I evidently became sick after two hours, leaving Henry no choice but to take me home. No, Henry’s no quitter — he tried everything in his power to get me to stay, tossing out suggestions such as: “Well, you don’t have to ride anything. I can ride by myself. Just sit on that bench over there and I’ll be back in a few hundred thousand hours” and the classic “Go in the bathroom and use your finger. Make yourself puke and then you’ll feel better.” What are you saying, Henry? Is this some sort of double entendre? Do you think I’m fat? Why do you really want me to throw up, Henry, so I can stay a few more hours and not make this a wasted trip, or so that last candy bar and plate of cheese fries don’t stick to my ass? So now what, you’re some sort of pageant mom? Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, if I turned bulimic. Then I could be an Olsen and make it easier for you to keep me locked in the closet. Oops, did I just say that? Now the world knows!

Now here’s the thing — I can’t remember if I really did get sick, or if I was just being bi-polarish and over dramatic and that’s why we left. In my mind, I can see myself roiling in pain, pressing back a torrent of vomit with shaking hands, but I have a habit of creating my own memories, in which I paint myself as a victim. I’m going to toss out an educated guess here and suggest that I probably wanted something and Henry said no and the day’s mood quickly soured from there, so I faked illness to get sympathy. On the ride home, I vaguely remember producing a slight fountain of pity waterworks while Henry white-knuckled the steering wheel and kept his eyes glued to the road. Between theatrical sniffles and staccato intakes of breath, I could hear the cash register in his head dinging as it calculated all the money we wasted that day.

However, there was a time right before that doomed trip where Henry’s kid Blake and I were the only patrons at a rickety mall parking-lot carnival. We bounded from one death trap to the next like Japanese beetles buzzing in the wind, not having to piss with any lines.

We both got really sick that day.

Now, these are the only two pieces of evidence I have to fall back on and exhibit A is pretty fucking distorted. Am I at that age where spinny rides have the ability to blast through my equilibrium and shackle my body with waves of nausea? Or were these just two very bad circumstances?

I find myself worrying about things that never occurred to me as a kid. What do I eat? Do I eat something light before I get there? Will coffee come back to bite me in the esophagus later in the day? Do I stick with familiar edibles of a doughy nature in order to absorb any future risk of gastric acid rising from centrifugal force? If I don’t eat at all, look out maelstrom! One thing is for sure — my Rolaids SoftChews will be tucked snugly into my pocket.

I worry about rides breaking and catapulting me to my grisly death. I hear nuts and bolts popping and clicking and my mind starts racing and making up premonitions that I can visualize behind closed eyes, and before I know it, the ride’s over and I didn’t even get a chance to enjoy it. These are the things that used to make me applaud as a kid, the element of fear that makes your blood buzz with exhilaration. I don’t feel that anymore. Relief–now there’s something I feel. With each and every ride I disembark without whiplash, hemorrhaging or sprained body parts, I’m flooded with relief and feel an overpowering urge to go to church. For real this time, is what I say to God in my head.

And my hair. What do I do with my hair? I want to wear one of my scarves because I’m so scene, but what if it blows off on a spinny ride? That’s a whole FOUR DOLLARS drifting off in the wind. I don’t like to wear my hair pulled back because it brings out neurotic smoothing motions every thirty seconds, much like a nervous tick. Don’t even get me started on fly-aways–I’ll produce a cold sweat. Flashbacks from days sporting more barrettes than a braided black girl as my mom attempted to keep each and every last stray tuft of my hair in place. My scalp tingles when I think of how some of those plastic barrettes held down sections of hair pulled much too taut–now that I’m an adult, I realize my mother did this on purpose. It was a form of “accidental” torture.

But if I wear my hair down? O-ho — knots ahoy!

What do I wear? This frantic compulsion stems from school picnics at our local amusement park, Kennywood. It was tradition to have a new outfit to wear so all the boys will notice you. Never mind that they didn’t notice you in a thirty-desk classroom. I remember my eighth grade apparel like it was yesterday. It came from Merrry-Go-Round and I looked like an extra in Salt-n-Pepa’s “Push It” video–jean shorts with purple leather on the fronts of the legs, a black tank top with a purple mesh shirt over top. Oh, I was so fly. By the end of the night, that fucking shirt had more snags in it than the stockings on a hooker’s trunk-stuffed body.

I’ve been stressing over this all week. If I squeeze my eyes shut real tight, I can hear the cruel cadence of my step-dad’s chastising voice, reminding me that it’s not the fucking prom. Almost like holding a seashell up to my ear. Thanks, daddy.

Many moons ago, I was a young and spry youth with pigtails and Bandaid-adorned knees, skipping around Kennywood like I owned it, when a tragedy struck. A friend and I were exiting a ride equipped with swinging cars. As I stepped out, my friend took her hand away from the car, which had been holding it in place and keeping it from swinging. The car swung toward me and scraped the back of my ankle. I remember an eternity of travail, time stopping, voices sounding afar, and thinking, “This is it. I’ve lost my foot. Now I’ll have to get fitted with a club and all the kids at school will mock, ‘Hey let’s play croquet with Erin’s club foot!'” Cotton candy and funnel cake proved to be a sure-fire distraction and I eventually stopped hopping on one foot.

This is the part that stands out the most–when I went home that night, I couldn’t take off my sock. It was actually glued to my heel with blood. Each and every tiny tug and pull created a stinging sensation that traveled up to my thigh. I was so afraid to show my mom because I just knew she would take me to the hospital and the sorry doctor would shake his head and I could read his lips as they mouthed, “We need to take the foot.”

At the very least, my step-dad would want to pour peroxide over the wound which always made me feel as though I was being punished for getting hurt.

Vowing to keep my mutilation under wraps, I thrust my socked foot under warm running water in the bathtub, grimacing as it saturated my laceration, until I was finally able to slowly peel off the sock and watch rivulets of coagulated blood slide off my ankle and swirl around the drain.

I still remember the socks I was wearing that day.

As kids, we’re more resilient. What if something like this occurs on Saturday? What if the rusty steel from a thrill ride pierces and catches my skin and before anyone can save me, my flesh is being unraveled like a mummy. I’m no kid–I’m much higher off the ground now; I’m susceptible to much more damage. Chances of me breaking a bone are more likely than walking away with a sprain. I’m a walking accident! Call me on the phone and listen to how many times I murmur “Ow” as I walk from one room to another. I am fucking panicking here. I don’t want to get hurt! I don’t want the whole of King’s Island to see my blood!

If I die on Saturday, it better be from something cool, like a roller coaster jumping track and plummeting into a ravine. Not something anticlimactic, like me tripping over my feet and then getting run over by a tram.

There is an upside, however.

When Henry and I spend large amounts of time together in public, the tension grows and multiplies until eventually a thick fog of it is smothering us and testing our gag-reflexes. But this time, we won’t be alone — Christina and her sister Cynthia will be accompanying us and hopefully cutting through the bulk of that fog. Instead of fighting with Henry all day, I can mix it up between him and Christina. And of course, any innocent by-standers who cross my path.

Plus, maybe I can convince Christina to buy me a souvenir cup.

***

We left Saturday morning and drove through a consistent sheath of downpour, which led Henry to blabber on about how “if it’s raining like this when we get there, I am not wasting my money at King’s Island, I’m sorry.” And somewhere on a stretch of wet highway still within the boundaries of West Virginia, we had a shouting match about how he’s going to treat our pre-conceived baby (we love playing Hypotheticals) and I stamped my foot down hard and yelled, “Take me home!” at which point he laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes and I wanted to break his stupid glasses.

After many stops so he could drain his grizzled bladder, we finally made it to Christina’s house in Hamilton, neither of us maimed or sustaining any head trauma, amazingly (my limbs flail when I’m angry and trapped within the confines of a cramped Nissan Sentra).

I know many of you had been holding your breath all weekend long, wondering what I did with my hair and/or if I retched myself into clammy-handed oblivion on any rides at King’s Island.

1. I wore my hair down in hopes of starting a knotted and dreadlocked free-for-all. I tried to act blissfully unaware (I think maybe I did a not-so-good job) and only ran my fingers through it as a makeshift comb about forty times after each ride. And I only furtively smoothed down the mini afro of frizz atop my head all day long, but really—who’s counting? By the second hour, I purposely avoided any glimpses of myself in restroom mirrors.
2. I did not get sick; however, I brought home a lot of (free) souvenir bruises. No contusions, bless our fine Lord. What the hell — and his mommy, too.

While I would love to sit around the campfire with hot cocoa, recounting tales of all my favorite rides (Son of Beast was the most funnest you guys), all I can really remember amidst the whirlwind of clanging metal parts and side-stepping fresh gum in my path is one thing: checking for my period.

I came prepared. The arsenal of tampons was just short of being strapped to my body like dynamite—I had one waiting in each pocket of my cargo pants in addition to a surplus of “just in cases” in my purse. If I had worn boots, I would have tucked one or two in there, also…next to my switchblade. Which I don’t have yet, but someday. Someday.

“Check me! Do I have stainage?” These were my pleas to Henry, Christina and Cynthia every ten minutes while we were held hostage in one line after another. Oh, how I yearned to make fun of others in my proximity, but feared to in case Karma came back to paint a large blood target on my crotch.

I got lucky when we disembarked Flight of Fear, an indoor ride, as no one was around me. “Block me,” I whispered hoarsely to Christina as I leaned forward and spread the legs of my pants apart nice and wide, to inspect for wetness. Doing this while keeping a steady pace walking down a slanted corridor takes skills. Skills which I possess. I like to compare it to performing magic amidst a ring of fire.

But something good came out of my obsessive bathroom breaks–the highlight of my amusement park junket.

Picture it: You’ve just emerged from a stall with eyes raised to the Heavens (bathroom ceiling) above and are silently praising the Lord Almighty for no blood stains on your panties (if you’re a man, picture it anyway. It’ll help build character). As you’re washing your hands real good because this place is dirty (and if you had a more accelerated condition of OCD, you probably would be convulsing and foaming at the mouth by now), you start to panic as you wonder when your next chance will be to “check.” Everyone in your group groans as you drone on and on about your need to “check,” but you can’t shake the paranoia and obsessive need to make sure you’re not drizzling menstrual blood down your legs; the fabric of your cargo pants is thin and blood will seep right through in no time.

You slowly snake the paper towel around your wet hands, sopping up the water and looking at yourself in the mirror, wondering when you became so uptight about the small things. You contemplate telling Christina you want drugs (ask and she’ll do it) so you can relax and if you end up floating around town with curdled blood around your thighs, big deal; you’re too busy goo-goo’ing and ga-ga’ing at the giant unicorn smiling down at you from a cloud.

And then you start thinking about unicorn porn.

Wait, where were you? Bathroom, hands, drying. So, you turn to your left and casually pitch the paper towel into the large garbage can, when you happen to get a glimpse of something extraordinary. So extraordinary it snaps you back to the here and now. No more unicorn.

The bathroom stall directly in your line of vision is slightly ajar, with its occupant standing hunched over, jean shorts and white cotton underwear down around her knees. Before you even have a chance to scold yourself, your eyes slip down a few inches and that’s when you see it.

a  real life vagina.

You feel your friend Christina tugging on your arm and saying in a terse whisper, “Erin, let’s go. You’ve seen enough” but you can’t pull your eyes away from the hairy mound of flesh ten feet in front of you. Your body slightly lurches as you feel the giddiness building up and you’re ready to explode into a conniption of giggles. Christina steers you to the exit and you run and tell your friends what just happened, waving your hands like you’re approaching the climax of a jazz dance routine, and rubbing it in their astonished faces. “You don’t know what you just missed in there!” you say smugly, trying to catch your breath. You feel like you’re on a safari. Then you make them stand around, in the way of hundreds of fast-moving patrons and strollers, so you can point out the woman whose vagina you saw. They don’t really care but you make them wait anyway, and when she comes out of the restroom with her kids, you jump and point and they shrug and start walking away.

And that’s my big exciting highlight. It would have been cooler if she was being scalped or having her face painted at the same time I saw it, but what can you do.

My second favorite moment was eating at the Festhaus. I had pizza and fries, but not just any fries: Fries with a buffet of condiments. I derived great, some might even say ecstatic, amounts of pleasure by deliberating in which pool of sauce each fry would be taking a bath: would it be the succulent marriage of ketchup and mayo, the tiny basin of honey mustard, or the thick and rich vat of creamy nacho cheese? My companions had long since finished eating and sat around idly while I dined on one single fry after another. It was heaven.

Lately I’ve been really into dipping things.

We left around 10:00 that night so I could be back at Christina’s in order to bid on a spectacular piece of Cure memorabilia. In between spastic menstrual wonderment, fleeting thoughts of missing the Ebay auction would swim through my mind. I even carved a reminder on my inner wrist, imagining my pen was a box cutter and I was sacrificing my tainted blood in the name of Robert Smith.

“Why would you write it there?” Henry asked in a tone that would suggest I just pissed in the corner of a church (I would actually do that too).

“Because it’s the part of my body that I look at the most.” Sadly, I had to explain this to him because, evidently, after four years he hasn’t picked up on my morbid fascination with my veins. And my ribs. Ooh, shivers.

This is one of the sponsor paintings I made for Blogathon. I got a little attached to it AND NOW IT’S GONE. I hope my sponsor likes it.

The second time I participated in Blogathon, back in 2007, I decided to bribe people to sponsor me by offering to paint them pictures. I wound up having to churn out nearly 20 paintings on 6×8 canvas board. It was the first time I had painted in YEARS. And it showed. Believe me. (Not that I’m some fucking Picasso now, but still – at least I’ve upgraded from q-tips to brushes.) As crude as my style was,  it still made me remember how much fun it was, and how good it was to just lose myself in paint swirls for a little while every day. So I kept doing it. That’s how Somnambulant started three years ago.

I stopped painting a few months ago, with the exception of a few custom cupcake couples here and there. Painting started to have a bad connotation for me. I’d look around my house and see all these old paintings I made that were based on songs Christina and I liked, or a line from a poem she had written about me.

It made me not want to ever hold a paintbrush again, like a piece of my mind had petrified.I just felt dead.

Saturday night, as I sat across from my friend Jessy on a bench, she asked in earnest, “What can we do to get you past this? To get you to start loving painting again?”

I’m not sure what that answer is. I know I need to get all these old paintings out of my house. Be it by selling them, burning them, frisbee’ing them over a cliff, I don’t know. But I think the only way is to start fresh. My style is still pretty rudimentary and childish, but that’s how I like it. And apparently, there are other people who like that, as well and it’s been really fun making friends and connections through art. I’ve been missing that part of it. The part where people send me photos of their newly purchased painting hanging on their wall. The part where people take time out of their day to send me convos on Etsy telling me they enjoy the stories that go along with the paintings. I miss that.

I first painted skulls back in May because of that Etsy’s Dark Side birthday swap I’m apart of. The girl I was given to gift loves skulls and I had never really done much with skulls before. Something similar to the above painting is what came of that. And it was sort of fun! Cutting and gluing newsprint teeth proved cathartic. There wasn’t a sadness backing it like so many of my other paintings have (whether you can see it or not, I know it’s there).

I have mini ones on Etsy and I might make more; I’m trying to take baby steps. But these skulls, they’re fun to paint and don’t remind me of heartache.

Yet, anyway.

If you’re a zombie fanatic, you might know that Pittsburgh is pretty much a Babylon for enthusiasts of the staggering undead. Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead were both filmed nearby, considering George Romero (and Tom Savini) is from the area. Monroeville Mall (the mall from Dawn of the Dead) even has a small (but growing!) zombie museum inside a collectible toy store. The proprietor of the museum sent out a Facebook invitation to a zombie car wash which was going to be held in the mall parking lot.

Chooch is really into zombies; this isn’t a newsflash to anyone. He expressed interest in attending the car wash, but I kept having flashbacks to his zombie birthday party when seeing Bill all made-up into a walking corpse freaked Chooch out so bad that he scrambled into the car and cowered on the floor under the steering wheel. The whole way to the mall, Henry and I prepped him.

“You know it’s not real, right?”

“They’re just people with make-up on.”

“It’s for charity so don’t fuck this up!”

The proceeds of the car wash went to the Animal Rescue League, so it was even more incentive to go out and support the zombie laborers.

Chooch was a little taken aback for the first few seconds, but then found true love in the form of a Bettie Page-esque zombie-girl in a bloodied white dress. She kept staggering over to his window while we sat in the line of cars awaiting our team. He was completely smitten.

This dude was sincerely freaking me out. He was wearing coveralls that said “Jake.” If you’re ever in the market for an intimidating tune-up, you should hire him.

I kept saying, “Look, he’s one of Blake’s friends” and I bet Blake would have pissed if he was there. “WHY BECAUSE HE LOOKS SCENE AND I’M SUPPOSED TO KNOW ALL SCENE KIDS?” is what I can hear Blake yelling. He gets so angry at my stereotyping!

Can you imagine if zombies were real? Chooch would be like the Holy Grail of victims. They’d take one look at his melon-head and get boinging appetite hard-ons at the thought of the mother-whompin’ brain inside there.

Later that night, I was sitting inside Pixie’s car waiting for Jessy. I was telling her about the zombie car wash and then glanced over at my car which was parked next to hers.

“They didn’t do a very good job,” I murmured, noticing streaks of baked bird shit.

“Fuckin’ zombies,” Pixie spat.

While down-home Americana and other fine handmade crafts aren’t really my decorating style, I do enjoy going to various fairs and festivals full of vendors shilling their rustic wares. So when Jessy suggested that we all go to Columbiana, Ohio for the Shaker Festival last Sunday, I was all for a little expedition in the woods. Plus, Henry said there would be AMISH PEOPLE THERE.

For me, the big picture was hooking up Henry with Jessy’s husband Tommy. We’ve been planning a group vacation to the beach next summer, and Tommy has expressed concern because he doesn’t really know Henry. I told Jessy I would handle it; they should be trading porn before we know it.

A great opportunity arose the night before the Shaker Festival, when Jessy texted me and asked where I thought we should meet.

“Ooh, we should let the MEN handle this part,” I thought, the wheels turning and a devious grin splitting my face. Jessy texted me Tommy’s number and my assault on Henry began immediately.

“Call him. Here, call him. Here’s his number, call him. PLEASE CALL HIM YOU’RE MAKING ME LOOK LIKE AN ASSHOLE PLEASE DO NOT RUIN THIS VACATION FOR ME OR I WILL FUCK YOU UP.”

“I’m not calling him just because you two want me to! I’ll call him when I’m ready,” Henry argued. Defiance never did look good on him. Just makes his dick look small.

“He’s probably sitting there staring at his phone!” I yelled. “You better call the boy right now!”

He continued to lounge on the couch, soaking in the sensation of standing his ground. So I snatched his phone and texted Tommy. He’s lucky my reputation is on the line here, or I would have sent the most flaming, rainbow-tinted text imaginable, but I stuck with the safe, “Hey man, what are you thinking for tomorrow?” I even spelled everything correctly and resisted the urge to call him “cuz.”

Tommy never replied (Henry looked a little sad about that), so Jessy and I finalized plans on our own, but that’s OK – we’re used to doing everything ourselves.

Once we pulled into the parking lot and got out of our respective vehicles, Chooch honed in on Tommy and it was all over. They antagonized each other for the rest of the day and I said a silent prayer; finding someone who can hold Chooch’s attention is not easy. Jessy’s mom Karen and her husband Gary were also in attendance, which I liked. I enjoy things done in groups; it makes me feel cozy and less worried that I’m going to get lost.

“Go over there and stand with Tommy,” I whispered sternly to Henry, trying to get him to bro-up.

“I’ll do it on my own terms, stop pushing!” Henry hissed, shrugging away from me.

Once the admission was paid and we were enveloped by the trees, Jessy was off to the races. We would walk a few feet and then someone would say, “Where’s Jessy?” We’d stop and slowly make a 360 degree pivot. Sure enough, she’d be inside one of the little woodland shops we had walked past, making friends with the vendors.

The rest of us spent a good amount of time standing in a huddle in the middle of the footpaths, with Chooch plunked down in everyone’s way, dumping pebbles out of his sandals.

It didn’t take me long to realize that there weren’t any real Amish people there, just vendors dressed up in period costumes. It’s a good thing I’m pretty good at figuring things out on my own, because if I had asked someone where the Amish were, well, I imagine I might have found myself in a very embarrassing Alamo moment.

While Jessy was looking at non-edible things, my belly zeroed in on a small round table brimming along the edges with a multitude of jars of jellies. This was basically the beginning of the end for me. I had just dove into my sampling frenzy, spreading a thick slab of lemon meringue butter onto a cracker, when Vickie herself emerged from the storefront and said, “Here, try this one, but put some cream cheese on it first.” It was some sort of apple walnut bullshit, but once it was married with the cream cheese, it took on a whole new meaning. My tongue had suddenly become the coke table at Studio 54 and it wanted more.

I ran to get Henry, begging him to try it. He didn’t bust out into a shimmy-shake of delight like I had, but I figured it was just because his palate is so old and damaged from all his years of doing fuck all in the Service.

There were others I wanted to buy, but I stuck with the apple walnut jelly, because it called forth visions of hayrides and Thanksgiving dinners (the kinds I’ve seen on TV, anyway), and the lemon meringue butter, because it was sugar shock in a jar.

I walked away with my bag of Vickie’s jellies, trying to snuff the desire of dunking my fingers in the jars right there in front of everyone. If it was just Jessy, I’d have done it. Probably just stuck my whole fat tongue inside a jar until I gagged. But there were other people in our party so I was trying to act like I hadn’t just escaped the zoo. (“Since when?” Henry would probably ask, assuming he ever read this shit.)

I’d like to put Vickie in a jar, if you know what I mean. (And I hope you don’t.)

But my hunger for samples was insatiable. After my jelly binge, I walked into a candle storefront with Jessy and instantly began looking for a tray of candle samples to taste.

Occasionally, Jessy would find herself in hostage situations in some of the storefronts and Tommy would have to rescue her. I would always start out going inside with her, but damn, that girl is a professional shopper.  Where I just glance at things, she picks everything up, holds it up to the light, lightly bites it to check its authenticity. I think I even caught her polishing the lens of a pocket loupe in one of the jewelry shops.

Meanwhile, I would look at one or two things and immediately find myself distracted by something going on outside. So I’d wander off. I fail as a woman in so many ways. Though I do succeed in using my tits to get what I want. So there’s that.

I got chastised after taking a picture of this little faux-Amish kid.

“Oh ma’am,” came the  softly pious, high-pitched voice of a similarly-clad man to my right. “We don’t allow pictures taken here.” He gave me one of those feigned apologetic smiles, coupled with sad eyes and a head tilt. I’m assuming it was the kid’s dad. Look, dickhead, if you don’t want people taking photographs of your son, then don’t dress him like he’s one of the Children of the Corn.

Henry said the guy was probably more worried about people taking pictures of his wares. If you start seeing neon-painted beach signs popping up on my Etsy, you’ll know where I got the idea.

Fudgie Wudgie was there passing out samples. I think that’s when it was really clear to me that this wasn’t actually an Amish thing. But that didn’t stop me from sucking back a blueberry cheesecake fudge sample before skulking over to the next booth and licking some of their no-bake cheesecake samples from a plastic spoon. Feeling energized by the samples, I joined Jessy in a storefront shilling these pretty, shimmery jewelry things. We both decided we liked the bracelets. I pointed out an orange and pink stone and said I liked that one the best.

Then I left and commingled with our group some more while Tommy whined about being so hungry and where the hell was Jessy? She finally caught up with us and said to me, “Look what fell in my purse, I have no idea how that happened.” She opened her purse mysteriously and there, laying on top, was the bracelet I was admiring. At first, I thought it really had just fallen in there. “What are the odds?” I thought. But then my second thought was, “Oh my god, Jessy stole this!?” and I quickly made a list of all the heists I could have her pull. But really, she bought it. For me! She bought herself one too so I decided they’re friendship bracelets. Henry is so jealous.

We lost Jessy, her mom and Gary inside the gnashing jaws of a snowman shop. It just happened to be right near the path to the food vendors, down which Tommy stared with glazed-over eyes and saliva-dripping lips.

I’m certain Tommy was cramming in a two minute lesson on strippers, fishing and bb guns over french fries and it scares me how piqued Chooch looks as he takes it all in.

The map we picked up at the entrance promised “authentic Shaker food.” I’m still under the impression that Shakers are some bastard mutations of Amish and I promise you I didn’t see any shoo fly pie or succatash being heated by nothing but the flame of a lantern and the Lord’s warmth. Last I checked (which was literally just now, just this very second), the Amish weren’t known for their fajitas.

Which is what I had for lunch.

Everyone else had meat. Then the Tumbleweed Band came on stage, announced they only had a few shirts left, and promptly drove us away with their banjo bullshit.

They’re men. I’m sure whatever they were looking at either involved buoyant breasts or a barbeque pit, or buoyant breasts being barbequed in a pit.

After lunch, Jessy did some more shopping I think. I wouldn’t know. It’s hard to see what’s going on around you when your face is engulfed in row after row of samples. It was the motherlode. Every type of dressing, barbeque sauce, hot sauce, mustard, vegetable dip you could think of: it was all spread-eagled on a table that seemed to stretch for miles. And inside the storefront were more samples: jellies and jams, syrups, no-bake cheesecake mixes. I tried it all. Some I tried twice, despite the crudely drawn sign that tried to deter such greedy behavior.

“Try to stay away from the dips that are cream cheese-based,” Henry warned. “They’ve been sitting out in the sun all day; you’ll get sick.” Henry knows me very well, which is why I can’t figure out why he’d waste his breath. Of course I’m going to indulge in every single sample laid out.

It’s what they’re there for.

To be sampled.

By me.

Because if I don’t, I’ll die. Just a fun little survival game  I like to play by myself.

So I kept right on dunking.

“Hey Erin,” Tommy taunted. “Try the Hell’s Kitchen sauce. It’s not that hot. I swear.” And then he and Henry exchanged little school girl giggles.

On one hand, I was annoyed by this tag-team effort to dangle me over a vat of bubbling Precarious Situation. But on the other, I was tickled that Henry and Tommy were teaming up because it meant they were bonding.

I marched over and jammed a pretzel into the Hell’s Kitchen sauce and tossed it in my mouth.

“It’s not hot——” I tried to say, but then my tongue went up in flames. And then I swallowed and my esophagus exploded.

Henry and Tommy thought this was hilarious, and I was still trying to deny that it was too hot for me. Although the fact that parts of me were disintegrating before their eyes kind of gave away my lie.

I got an instant headache from that tiny little spot of sauce. Gary had also jumped onto the Ridicule Erin trampoline by that point, but I was too busy choking back bile to get as defensive as I normally would have. I wasn’t down for the count immediately, but as the day progressed, and the curdled creams in all the sauces I swallowed began their digestive fornication, I started to feel decidedly not OK. And then I started thinking about the first trimester of my pregnancy, when I was a total whore for condiments, and how I filled the fridge with exotic soft cheeses and sour creams and spent my days submerging crackers into their cold tubs while laying on my side watching “Rome.”

And then I burped a little.

Oh, but a little nausea didn’t deter me! We found another sample-laden store front near the entrance and my first thought was, “How did I miss this?” and then “Oh my  god, more hot sauce!”

It was here that I managed to lose all six people in my group. Rather than call any of them, I sent out an SOS tweet.

Tweeting is the new 911.

Then Henry found me and bought me some kind of berry cobbler shit, which I didn’t really enjoy but still dug into it until Henry pulled the bowl away from me.

Nice purse, Tommy!

Chooch kept asking, “Who ARE these people?” when we were forced into the unthinkable – sharing a table with strangers. They returned his rude inquiries with polite laughter, and I kept kicking him under the table. Stop making them notice us, boy! God, if conversation was a vampire, he’d be inviting it in on the daily.

I love how Henry is looking at his fingers, trying to replicate Tommy’s RUDE GESTICULATION. During one of many nudge-nudge sessions between Jessy and me, regarding Henry and Tommy’s blossoming bromance, Henry defensively muttered, “Would you two stop! I’m not a girl, stop trying to set me up with Tommy!”

The “I’m not a girl” argument made Jessy stop in her tracks. “Oh, I don’t know about all that, Henry. I’ve seen the pictures!”

Chooch was still asking, “Where are the rides?” as we walked through the parking lot to our respective cars.

I went home and promptly purged all the samples from my ailing body then passed out for about an hour.  Even though my taste-testing indiscretion proved lethal in the end, it was still a really fun and fulfilling day, and the company couldn’t have been any better. I’m really enjoying spending time with Jessy and her family; it’s just easy and laid back. I can be myself and laugh until my cheeks hurt. I’m thinking this beach vacation is going to be pretty rad.

Yes, it was a great day, but now I associate Jessy with vomiting. (Kidding!)

Last Wednesday, I received my official offer letter from The Law Firm. As of August 30th, I’ll be a permanent employee, and with the temp status eradicated, I will no longer make myself feel like the red-headed step child! I was sitting at the playground with Chooch when the email from the HR department came to my phone. Sitting there at the picnic table, surrounded by wavering odor-rays of boiling piss (playgrounds are disgusting with that spongy shit they put down over the asphalt), I read the offer letter and promptly cried. I don’t often cry out of happiness. That’s not really my style. So you know that what I read in this letter was a pretty big deal for some uneducated asshole like myself.

I look back to last April, when an employment agency completely cold-called me while I was already placed at another assignment by another temp agency, and I can’t help but feel like the whole situation was handed to me on silver platter; that all the shit I had to go through over the last few years with unemployment, false-positive drug test results (I still stew over that, but if that hadn’t been the case, I might be working for pennies right now at FedEx), and jobs that had me working with the likes of Eleanore and Tina was worth it. No, I don’t like every single person with whom I work. Does anyone, really? But the great thing about my job is that I only work five hours a night and with four different people every night. Plus G (as in, Granny Cleavage). And most of that time, I’m by myself.

Which is what I prefer.

And there’s cake, and not the shitty kind that’s born in supermarket “bakeries,” either. And Kaitlin’s macarons, among other disgustingly perfect baked goods she whips up like it ain’t no thing.

And there’s Barb, who reads my blog and doesn’t think I’m a psycho and who makes the first 90 minutes of my shift entertaining. And there’s hockey fans, HUGE hockey fans.

And I finally work in a place where wearing Beer Tees, Crocs, and flip flops isn’t acceptable. Where people speak properly and use smart words and I love smart words.

When I went into work Friday afternoon, people were huddled around the table by the kitchen. And I mean, literally huddled, all hunched over, examining whatever was on the table which I couldn’t see. Someone, I think it was Barb but it was all a blur, noticed me walking by and said, “Oh Erin! There’s cake here. And it’s for you!”

I thought she was kidding. But apparently my boss had sent out an email to the department earlier, informing everyone of the news of my employment. There were about thirty replies in my inbox, all “Re: Erin Kelly” yet 90% of them were about cake.

Cake!

“So…does that mean we get to have cake?”

“Seriously, will there be cake? Because if not, I’ll have to find something else to eat.”

I replied all, something about “I’m always happy to provide a reason for cake,” which started a new string of emails asking, “So, does that mean we can have cake every time Erin comes in?” which somehow ended in me being reborn as Night Cake.

There were a few actual emails congratulating me, if you had the patience to sift through all the cake-centric replies.

Solipsism runs rampant there, so really, I kind of fit right in.

However, the downside to that is that I had to cut my own cake.

The best thing about belated birthday gifts is that you’re usually not expecting them and it provides lingering joy to becoming a year older. Cris from skeletaldropkick was the third person who got stuck with me for the Etsy Dark Side birthday swap, and her gift arrived last Friday.

It was worth the wait.

Skeletaldropkick mugs suit me better than any other mug in the world. I bought one back in 2007 and used it as my work coffee cup. This is what ensued:

This is my mug that I use at work. Sometimes, I leave it on the kitchen counter when I’m on a fervent quest for hot chocolate or making a pee pitstop before refilling with coffee.

Last night, I was washing it out when Collin (i.e. The New Guy) walked in behind me. After we got the “Jesus Christ you scared me!” formalities out of the way (seriously, that guy is the most quiet walker ever; his soles are padded with clouds I think), Collin laughed and said, “I should have known that mug was yours.”

I’m not sure what that says about me, but I’d like to believe it’s that I am an awesome young lady with great taste in handmade wares. Oh, and that I’m good at Boggle and blow jobs.

I still love the shit out of that mug, but I stopped drinking out of it for fear of my butter fingers giving it a literal skeletal drop kick. Still, it was the first thing I brought with me when I started my job at The Law Firm last April and it sits ghoulishly on my desk with pens sprouting out of his head. Oh, and don’t forget the cameo appearances he made during the Great STD Cookie Party of ’08!

I’m so excited to have a new skeletaldropkick addition. Can’t wait to see what kinds of lascivious shenanigans we can get into! Thank you, Cris!

Currently, we’re on our way to the Shaker Festival in Columbiana, Ohio. We’re following Tommy and Jessy, but Henry is too stubborn to stop referring to the map on his phone and he’s making me anxious.

I’ve never been to the Shaker Festival before but I hear there are Amish people there, and that’s good enough for me.

Aside from Henry, me and Chooch, we have a fourth passenger. Chooch has taken a liking to my old Alf doll and refused to leave this morning until Alf was securely seat-belted in. This started randomly last night, when Chooch grabbed him almost as an after thought on the way out the door to Taco Bell and made a big to-do about making sure Alf got food too.

To be honest, I had Chooch pegged as an imaginary friend kind of kid.

Two years ago, I wrote this:

My daughter lives above a BAIT SHOP??

One of my favorite movie quotes is from a 1980′s b-movie called Back to the Beach. I’m not sure if that was the start of it, but I’ve long been infatuated with bait shops. I’ve never been in one, I’ve never even gone fishing. But I’m obsessed with the gritty imagery that my mind conjures when I think of a bait shop.

Sometimes, I accompany Henry to his place of employment. On the way there, we pass this dingy shanty-like bait shop marked by a hand-written sign that boasts “Live bait. Worms. Fishing Suply.” I’ve been staring dreamily at this bait shop for four years now, and not once in those four years has anyone corrected the spelling of “suply.” It’s endearing.

My new job is a block away from Henry’s, and the fact that I drive past it every day on my way there might just be a coincidence to some; but to me, it’s kind of like a stripper swirling down a pole, her pasties flashing IT’S A SIGN in bright pink LED.

Bait shop, you’re calling my name. I do not know why. Maybe I was a fisherman in a past life, or bait, or maybe I was killed and buried behind a bait shop. But what I do know is that I want to go there, talk to its proprietors. (I believe it’s a husband-wife force; I saw the husband weed wacking yesterday and I’m unsure of which hurt the weeds more: the brutal annihilation served up by the weed wacker, or the vicious verbal rampage the husband appeared to be hatefully funneling at them.)

I had this great idea that I should go there and ask to shadow them for an hour or two, get up to my elbows in bait shop grease. Find out what makes a person go into the baiting biz – carrying the family torch? Addicted to the slithery squishiness of worms? Easy to snag a job after bait school?

I’d probably lie and say it’s for school (my classic excuse) so that I can take pictures of them, too. And maybe I’ll get lucky and snag a sound byte from this seven foot homeless man who loiters in the vicinity. You all know how much I love the homeless, maggots in their beards and all.

But Henry thinks this is a horrible idea. Like, they’ll be so aghast and threatened by my request that they’ll fillet me on the spot and sell my toes as bait. Of course, that’s the kind of diarrhea-inducing anxiety that makes me want to do it all the more.  I have this sick desire to do things that make me uncomfortable, and then complain and whine about it to Henry.

Plus, the bait shop sits haphazardly right above a river bank, so it’d give me an opportunity to be within feet of the sickening river, maybe conquer a fear or two.  Or see a dead body washed ashore, who knows.

Oh, and there’s a pier in their backyard, and I’m kind of obsessed with that shit, too. I don’t know, all these things add up to a big cream-filled YES to me.

EDIT: I just found out why Henry doesn’t want me going there. It seems that the husband-owner stepped in front of Henry’s car one day and yelled at him for going too fast (I asked Henry how he would be able to stand in front of our car if Henry was driving that fast, and Henry said “Exactly.”) so now Henry’s dickie shrivels in fear at the thought of the bait shop.

The point of reposting this is to inform the Internet that a MOVIE has recently been filmed in that exact location! It’s apparently some John Singleton flick with JACOB FROM TWILIGHT OMG YOU GUYS. No seriously, it’s called “Abduction” or something and it’s supposed to be a thriller, and last time I checked no vampires or werewolves had parts in it.

Henry said that they fashioned a new sign over top of the old sign. It says Pachenko’s Bait Shop or something now, but he thought it might just be there for filming.

So, when this movie comes out and you see this extremely lush and bountiful setting, that’s not bleak or run-down at all, think of me, my friends. Think of me.

If anyone wants to take me to a bait shop, let me know.

(P.S. I did go back there to do my fake interview, with Bill and Jessi two winters ago. We were practically chased off the property with shotgun blasts sounding in the sky behind us. Not really, but the dude very disgustedly assured us that “this ain’t no business.” It was scary. I can only imagine how agitated an entire film crew must have made him.)

poopycake, originally uploaded by appledale.

I still think this is my greatest creation ever. MAYBE EVEN BETTER THAN CHOOCH. Or at least, tied.

That was also probably the best birthday party I ever threw for someone. Too bad she completely didn’t appreciate it.

P.S. This was going to be my first attempt at the Wordless Wednesday I see all the cool bloggers doing.

Too bad I had to go and rape it with words.

Sometime this week, hopefully tomorrow, I’ll be posting a review of My Pretty Zombie’s Bride eyeshadow. I’m just waiting for Henry to model it for me so I can get some photographical evidence of what it looks like on real human eyelids, as opposed to that alien’s nutsack I swiped it on last night.

So until then, please enjoy a log of the IP Relay conversation my deaf alter ego Manuel had with Andrea, the brains behind My Pretty Zombie.

Anyway, my business partner Chooch drew me up a new zombie, so I made a new card.

I was originally printing the zombie line of cards on folded white cardstock, but I just wasn’t happy with the flimsiness of them. So I made Henry go back to the extra step of mounting them on thicker black cardstock. Now they’re sturdy. Not sturdy enough to cart your collection of prosthetics around town, though. Sorry.

All week, we had plans to go to Laurel Caverns on Sunday. Because that’s just where good parents want to take their hyperactive four-year-olds: 40 feet down into the earth, surrounded by 16,000 ways to injure or kill oneself. 

But first, I had to go through this panic-riffic hour where I was convinced Henry was dead. He has a second job on Sunday mornings, just to give us some extra cash since I screwed us all up by not working for so long. He usually gets home from that job around 7am. 

It was nearly 9am. I began to notice he wasn’t here only when I found things he did wrong around the house and my need to berate him began to grow impatient. I called him and it went to voicemail. 

Then I called him 28 more times and texted him saying, “If you’re not dead, please reply.” 

At this point, I really started to feel scared. All the things he does around the house and in life in general began skull-fucking me and my stomach took on a fast descent as I realized, “Holy shit. I might have to do things for myself. Who’s going to make my non compos cards?!”  I kept envisioning his work van, engulfed in flames, and how bleak my future looked when  filled with chores and financial responsibility and single parenting (yeah right, I’d find a new daddy, and fast). 

I was trying not to get too crazy around Chooch, because he’d only end up feeding off my panic and then there would be two hyperactive people panicking and crying and wondering who they’d find to take care of them.It was complete pandemonium inside my chest. 

“Can we still go to the cave even if Daddy doesn’t come home?” Chooch asked, quite sincerely. 

“Yes, but let’s make sure he’s alive first.” Then I had horrible visions of me taking Chooch to the caverns without Henry and one of us “accidentally” pushing the other down the Devil’s Staircase. Maybe we would just go to the park instead. 

Henry wasn’t dead. He pulled into the parking lot a little bit before 10 and Chooch and I raced across the street to meet him. I could see the look of fear on Henry’s face, because we never go out of our way to greet him. He probably thought the house was on fire. 

“I thought you were DEAD!” I yelled. Turns out it was his phone that was dead, though. Or he had it off while he was having sex for money, whichever. Plus, he didn’t get to his job until late because he slept in.  I was really clingy for the rest of the day. No, that’s a lie. Only for about an hour, then it went back to the normal with me bitterly suggesting that he just stop breathing altogether. 

So yeah, Laurel Caverns! I love that damn place, but haven’t been there since 2004 with my brother Corey when we stalked a yuppie couple in the gift shop. We made sure Chooch peed before entering the caverns, and then had a few minutes to kill in the gift shop. There were people already lined up, waiting for the tour to the start and I noticed they kept looking at Chooch with expressions seeped in disdain and disgust. 

“These people already hate us,” I whispered to Henry. “Let’s make sure we stay in the back.” 

And you know, for as chatty as my son is, he really wasn’t all that bad. There were moments where the guide would stop us to point out stalagmites and Chooch would start to fidget. I mean, I was fidgeting too so I can’t really hate on my kid. He was pretty good about not talking while the guide was talking though, which is more than I can say for the family with two kids behind us who ended up being the collective Chooch of the group. The kids weren’t really being that bad, just asking questions, which inspired both parents to shush them with such intensity that it was like the entire Slytherin house was behind me hissing. Their dad was some geology geek and really wanted to make sure everyone knew it. 

Ten minutes into the caverns, Chooch started to do a slight pee writhe. “I have to pee,” he whispered. Let me remind you that we were in a CAVERN. Even if pissing over a ravine was an option, the shitty family behind us kept lingering behind to take pictures so there was no whizzing opportunity. 

He made it sort of almost to the end before doing a pee-jig so grand scale, the tour guide stopped mid-sentence and asked, “Do you guys need to leave?” Luckily, it was at a point near the end of the route where there was a quick way to the exit. 

You best believe I stayed for the rest of the tour. Laurel Caverns is my jam. 

Not having Henry and Chooch there for the rest made me focus more on the rest of the group and I realized they were all assholes. Except for this one guy who pointed out a bat to me. 

I spotted the top of Henry’s bandanna undulating through the gift shop when the tour ended. Then I saw the rest of his face and it looked strained and annoyed. Apparently, Chooch made it to the bathroom. Just not the toilet. So Henry had to wash Chooch’s shorts the best he could in the sink and dry them under the dryer. 

“And now I’m not wearing any underwear!” Chooch cheered. Just add negligent mom to the list of other flaws I was given yesterday. 

Pissy Pants. (I was referring to Henry, but I suppose it works for either.) 

Walking out into the parking lot, I was bitching angrily about the shushing geology family when I noticed they were only a few feet away from us. I don’t think they heard me, because the mom offered Chooch a fruit roll-up. 

“I feel bad now,” I whispered to Henry as we approached our car. 

“No, you don’t,” he swiftly corrected. 

Laughing, I said, “Yeah, I know.” 

We stopped for lunch at some crappy family restaurant in the mountains where I had the least satisfying grilled cheese ever and our waitress with little green gauges asked to read my tattoo. 

“It’s Chiodos,” I said, and she smiled and walked away. 

To Henry, I muttered, “I thought maybe she would know, since she has gauges.” And then I pouted every time she came back because she wasn’t all “OMG CHIODOS” like I am. 

And of course we would get a flat tire on the way home. It was actually a good thing, because we’ve needed new tires in a very bad way, so now Henry has no choice but to get that done today. We pulled over in the Gene and Boots candy store parking lot. What magical timing. 

Chooch, who had been sleeping when this happened, flipped out. 

“I don’t want the tire to be flat!” he wailed, as though I had just told him one of the cats died. I couldn’t get him to stop crying, so I was left with no choice but to take him inside the candy shop and get him candy.  The perils of being a mom. 

There was some broad in there who watched Chooch and me like hawks from the moment we entered the shop. Oh I know, look at these two raggamuffins, right? Make sure we don’t steal anything! I didn’t even bring my purse with me, just my wallet, and Chooch was clearly tossing items into a basket so I don’t know what the issue was. But it almost made me want to chuck the basket at her and leave. 

There’s an ice cream shop there too, and when Henry was done with the tire, we all went inside. That same broad was behind the counter, taking her good old time scooping ice cream for someone who wasn’t even in there, and never once said, “I’ll be with you a minute” or even turned to acknowledge us with a smile. Nothing. 

And then I took a picture. She whirled around and very tersely said, “Oh, you can’t take pictures in here.” The way she said it triggered something in me, something 16-years-old and disgustingly petulant. I looked at Henry, smiled fakely and said, “Let’s not buy anything here!” and stormed out the door. I wondered why he wasn’t following me and saw that he was waiting to buy a Mountain Dew. I stuck my head back in the door and said shittily, “Just buy that at a store, she’s taking too fucking long.” Henry dejectedly put it back and stopped at a convenience store down the street. 

The inside of Gene and Boots. All their secrets revealed on the Internet in ONE PHOTO! PASS IT ON! 

Passing an Exotic Dancers sign outside of a seedy bar, Henry felt inspired to regale us with his history of strip clubs. 

“You were eleven the last time I went to one,” he laughed. The thought of that made me cover my breasts. 

He went on. “I got kicked out of one in Texas for giving a stripper a quarter.” 

“You can get kicked out for that?” I asked incredulously. 

“Yeah, when you throw it at her,” he clarified.