Even though I’m mad at him, here are some pictures of (an uncooperative) Chooch from last weekend.

Ugh, that dirty mouth. Always with the dirty mouth. In all aspects.

I’m not even going to pretend I haven’t been lurched toward the computer, waiting for exactly 11:11am, which is when D.R.U.G.S. promised to finally post a song. Because that’s exactly what I was doing.

You did good, Mr. Owens. But I still think D.R.U.G.S. is a stupid band name.

This whole Craig/Chiodos thing still tears me up inside.

A few weeks ago, Henry and I attempted to have a date night but someone forgot to make dinner reservations, so we wound up eating at some AARP rec room in Rostraver.

Halloween weekend, we finally made got to have our proper date night at the Gypsy Cafe.  The only bad part was that I was on the tail-end of a stomach virus, so all day long I practiced slow, deliberate bites while psychically pleading with my stomach to not return-to-sender.

Our reservation was for 5:00pm, right when they opened. We were the first ones inside, and I preferred that. Walking into crowded restaurants makes me blanch.

Gypsy Cafe is really small, intimate. The perfect setting for Henry and I to stare dumbly at one another and struggle for things to talk about.

“I love it here already,” I whispered to him, noting a Ouija board in a corner of the small stage by the door.

“You haven’t even had any food yet,” he argued, killing the moment.

I’m convinced I have some gypsy in me, and I’m not talking about the wang of Eugene Hütz. (Forget my name for a second – there isn’t an ounce of green beer and potato famine in this girl’s blood, OK? Also forget the brief phase I went through where I was fronting a gang to take down the gypsies after a pack of them pick-pocketed my Pappap in Rome. I was 11, but already had some hardcore anger issues.) For years, I’ve felt a strong pull to Romania and have always coveted Starr’s wardrobe in The Lost Boys.

See? Some concrete evidence right there.

I spent more time picking out the wine I wanted from the beverage menu than I did looking for an actual meal. Which made a lot of sense considering how sick I had been.

Nothing beats the stomach flu like a cold glass of Transylvanian wine. I ordered some pumpkin ale thing for Henry because I wanted to try it in hopes that it would be The One that would make me sort of like beer.

You can stop leaning forward in anticipation – it didn’t. It also wasn’t the beer that Henry had ordered, but something “comparable” to it.

Later, the waiter discovered that they did actually have the kind Henry had originally ordered, so he tried a bottle and ended up liking it a whole lot better than the replacement. I was angry that I was now going to be paying for two bottles of beer.

WE ARE NOT RICH PEOPLE, HENRY.

My wine was delightful though and made me feel like Vlad the Impaler was spearing my organs like enemy heads.

In all the good ways, of course.

We ordered the pumpkin curry hummus from our very blasé waiter.  Actually, it came with Henry’s dinner, but I ate most of it while Henry was too busy reading his beer label, glasses slid all the way down the bridge of his nose. It was definitely some of the best hummus I’ve spread on my tongue of late.

Henry and I both ordered the sweet potato bisque. The soup of the day literally changed three times in the 20 minutes since we arrived, and I was happy the roulette wheel stopped on the bisque because it sounded the most pleasing to me. (Seriously – three times they switched out the fucking soup on us.) The bowls were big and the bisque was velvety, savory and in my Will you can now read that this is the fluid with which I want to be embalmed. I wished that some Food Network suit had been there to watch my over-exaggerated facial orgasms as I spooned that creamy shit into my large mouth.

“I mean, yeah it’s good,” Henry said with a look of cautionary disgust after I said for the 7th time, “OH MY GOD THIS IS AMAZING ISN’T IT AMAZING.” I’m pretty sure he was anticipating me to de-bra and dunk my breasts into the warm soup. Because that’s usually what I do at home when I get super-excited about soup.

You don’t?

Must just be us gypsies.

My main course was the Autumn Tangine, which was a stew of root vegetables, farfelle, and golden raisins. I didn’t bother to ask Henry what he ordered, but it was something made from beast.

My tangine was alright. To be fair, I had reached the ready-to-burst precipice after gormandizing the shit out of that soup, so I was forcing tiny bites of the stew into my mouth at this point. I thought it was good, but it wasn’t anything different than something Henry would make at home. That’s either a huge compliment to Henry or a really cruel insult to the Gypsy Cafe.

I think next time, I’ll just sit at the bar with a flight of exotic Romanian wine and a vat of sweet potato bisque, pickpocketing the waitstaff.

(But no seriously – I need to go back on a day that’s not shared with me vomiting in the bathroom.)

Was going to post some photos I took of Chooch on Sunday, when he was being a huge sour puss.

I was looking at them, getting ready to upload them here, when I thought, “God, why can’t he be more cooperative? Like Blake.” And then I immediately thought of Blake’s pumpkinhead photos, and those are some of my favorite photos ever, so I’m giving them life again.

Also mostly because I don’t feel like writing shit today. I just want to watch TV while my kid is in school, OK?!

Blake, where you at? Let’s do this again soon.

Maybe if Chooch is lucky, I’ll post his photos later.

And maybe let him up from the basement.

These are really not that funny, Henry keeps saying. So then why do I have mascara running down my face?

Because I need help, according to Henry.

You better believe Manuel had that lazy operator call back and finish the message. Bitch, don’t cut off the deaf, ya hear? Well, we can’t.

And I made Henry give me his phone so I could record the messages for posterity. (He wouldn’t even listen to them. Sad.)

After my fit last Friday morning, the Furnace Guy was rescheduled for Saturday morning.

I hid on the stairs, out of sight, while Henry let him in the house.

“Well,” Henry interrogated me once Furnace Guy descended into the basement. “Is that the guy?”

I didn’t like his tone, how he was trying to fill my brain with doubt. No one ever believes the raped!

“I’m not sure,” I answered honestly. “I didn’t see him. On purpose.”

But I did see him a few minutes later when he popped back up to tell Henry that he would be back at 3:30pm.

“OK, so maybe that wasn’t the same guy,” I admitted. I hated how Henry made me feel so confused, so full of uncertainty. He’s clearly in the wrong line of work. He should be defending sex criminals in court, making poor little girls wring their hands and wonder if they really are the sluts their daddies accused them of being.

All afternoon and into the evening, our house was full of clanging metal and the muffled tones of Brian the Furnace Guy barking into his cell phone.

“I have to run to the store,” Henry sprung on me.

“You can’t leave me here!” I cried.

“Well, someone needs to stay home while he’s here and we both know YOU aren’t going to go grocery shopping alone.”

I knew the bigger picture was that he needed to hurry up and buy beer because Tommy and Jessy were coming over to watch the hockey game. This was Henry’s first time entertaining Tommy on his own turf and I knew Henry wanted it to be special. I think he even splashed on after shave. He didn’t even do that for our date last week.

“Fine,” I whined. I didn’t feel too panicked, knowing it wasn’t the same Furnace Guy from 2006. Besides, I wanted to watch Vampire Diaries anyway and Chooch’s loud mouth is not conducive to TV-viewing.

Half an hour after Henry and Chooch left, the Furnace Guy emerged like a mole from the basement.

“We got a problem,” he started, and it was then, while he was droning on and on in that strangulated voice I still sometimes hear in my subconscious, usually when someone is talking about heating ducts or going to someone’s house under the pretense of fixing their furnace and then raping everything with genitals, that it dawned on me that it really was the same guy after all.

He’s just older-looking now.

But that voice. It made me slowly fold my hands over my crotch and dart my eyes around for a good cock-incapacitating weapon.

“…..so I’ll be back in the morning,” he finished, while I continued to numbly nod my head and mutter monotone “uh huh”s until I heard the basement door shut and his van backing out of the driveway.

Won’t be needing that rape kit after all, Sarah Palin. This time, anyway.

The next day, I was so engrossed in my IP Relay fuckery that I completely forgot he was in the basement, finishing the furnace installation. When I step into my Manuel character, I essentially turn into a mentally-stunted sociopath whose laughter starts out low and throaty before quickly approaching psychotic levels of hysteria.

The cats can be found darting in furry streaks to take refuge under the bed. Henry turns up the TV.

My laughter continues to crescendo.

And that’s precisely what the Furnace Guy heard that day while he quietly toiled away in the basement: me, yelling out, “Oh fuck, I’m seriously going to pee my pants!” while snorting and choking on the insane sort of merriment generally only achieved with the aid of psychedelics.

In other words, I was a giddy mess. Alone at the computer I sat, hiccuping on my obnoxiousness, while Henry and Chooch quietly watched cartoons in the living room.

They’re used to this and have become quite good at blocking me out like nothing more than some weak Vietnam acid flashback.

They might have been impervious to my juvenile antics, but I like to believe that I turned the tables on the Furnace Guy. Who’s afraid of who NOW, muthafuckaaaa?

What’s that, Manuel? You need your furnace looked at? Well, let’s set up an appointment for you!

[This photo was taken while I was trapped at the computer as Furnace Guy was pointing something out to Henry regarding the thermostat. Henry knew I was taking the picture, so he was standing there all tense, like he was trying not to pass a brick of cocaine through his asshole. Henry hates that people can’t come into our house to do work without me acting like a fourth-grade reject.]

ETA: What the fuck, Furnace Guy just came back. I got stuck standing with him in the basement while he put some sort of tape on the furnace and talked to me about how, of all the basements he’s worked in, he’s not once seen a ghost. Thank God I had my four-year-old son there to protect me (even though it took him nearly the whole time to put his pants on in order to join me in the basement). Also, thank God he entered the basement through the side door and not the house, or else he’d have seen his picture on the computer screen. Hopefully this chapter is closed now.

Henry and I finally had our dinner date last Saturday night at the Gypsy Cafe. I guess Manuel found out about it and got a little jealous, because he spent the better part of his Sunday morning calling various Pittsburgh restaurants, trying to make reservations for himself and Henry.

Three different Denny’s denied him. One left him on hold until the operator finally called uncle and disconnected the call, and the other two Denny’s flat out hung up.

“Denny’s doesn’t even TAKE reservations!” Henry yelled from the couch, forced to listen to my frothing rant about how Denny’s hates deaf people. I am seriously considering notifying the House of Deaf People Who Have Been Fucked Over. Together, we can fight this. I am a REALLY GOOD letter-writerer.

Henry just doesn’t fucking get it.

Manuel then attempted to call the Capital Grill, one of Pittsburgh’s finer eating establishments, but was told that “we have tried doing this before but no longer can do this, sorry.” No longer can do what? Allow deaf people to eat at your restaurant? Just because we’re deaf doesn’t mean we can’t be rich. What if Marlee fucking Matlin is in town and wants to make a reservation? Are you gonna tell her IP Relay Operator to have her go fuck herself in her worthless ears and eat in an alley with the poor blind fuckers?

(Henry just walked past me, shook his head and gave me a fatherly “I’m disappointed in you” smirk.)

Manuel wasn’t about to give up. He was HONGry, you guys.  So he tried a little restaurant right up the street and found success.

I hope Henry can find a babysitter!

To be honest, I shouldn’t even be sitting here right now, posting on my blog. Maybe it’s lack of sleep, I don’t know, but I am gidDY. As in, giving myself chest pains from laughing hard at nothing. And I’m pretty sure I’m on the fast track to effectively losing half of my twitter followers, so why not move the show over to the blog, too?!

It all started this morning when Henry and I had a fight about the furnace guy.

“He’s coming there at 9:30 with a new furnace,” Henry told me over the phone.

“TODAY!?” I shrieked. “While I’m here ALONE!?” Henry confirmed that yes, that was exactly what he meant.

I have issues with the furnace guy. I dealt with him once in 2006 while Henry was at work and honest-to-god felt my labia curling up inside of itself every time he looked at me. Sleazy Guido, is exactly what this guy is. He was just here the other night, inspecting the furnace while I was at work, and Henry confirmed that it was the same guy from back then.

Never will I forget that man and the way he inspired me to donate to RAINN.

“Call him and cancel. CALL HIM AND CANCEL!” My arms were already protectively guarding my breasts as though the Hope Diamond was shoved between them and Sleazy Guido wasn’t even here yet.

“We don’t have a furnace!” Henry hollered. “It’s going to be 20 degrees this weekend!”

“Well then bundle up, mother fucker.”

A few minutes later, Henry confirmed that he canceled the appointment. “Happy now, you little crybaby?” he sneered.

“One of these days, some guy is going to walk in here and rape me. Then you’ll be sorry!” I yelled.

“Will I?” he asked. He’s only this brave when we’re not face-to-face.

Later, I was going through my blog archives, looking for something random to post on Facebook because I just know none of my friends think that is annoying at all. (I have little else in life, OK? My blog is kind of my BFF, you guys. And I just want you all to love it.) I found one from 2007 where Henry left me alone for like, 36 hours while he was in Detroit for some Nude Faygo Fanatics Convention or something. In that post, I mentioned that he had apparently attempted to sext me, but I mistook it for a picture of poop. Did you know that, Motorola Razr? Your camera phone turns genitalia into indistinguishable mounds of shit.

So I tweeted that today.

Henry didn’t like that very much.

I let him simmer down for a little while before calling him again. This is all I do all day: disrupt Henry at work. But if he ever called ME at work? Hoo boy, you can bet he’d get a tongue lashin’.

“I got an app for Christmas shopping,” I bragged to him because he has some lame phone that doesn’t do shit. He can’t even control the DVR with it, what a loser.

“Paper and a pen,” he retaliated.

“Yeah, but this allows you to keep track of your budget.”

“Paper, pen and a calculator.”

It was a free app, give me a break!

I feel an urgent need for Manuel’s services right about now.

And I won’t even get into the war path I’m on against mommy bloggers and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Though I will say I’m adding to my bio: “The only time you’ll catch me writing about cloth diapers is if I used one to smother a bitch.”

Today, this man is reminding me of the girl I used to be, the girl who would never let a bitch treat her poorly. And I know he would not approve of those who have been doing just that.

So today, I’m closing a door that I honestly thought would be open for a long time. And of that, I know he would approve.

It gets easier and easier.

I had given Henry explicit instructions on what to get for the cupcakes while I was at work Thursday night. The plan was that he was going to bake them and then I would attempt to not look like an honorary member of The Dream Team while recreating what I saw in the last issue of Better Homes & Gardens (which somehow is delivered with my name on it, but Henry is always quick to whisk it from the mail slot before I throw it away).

When I came home from work, it was after 9pm and I quickly saw that Henry had not yet made the cupcakes.

“I’ll get to it,” he kept muttering.

I distracted myself by stuffing the treat bags with lame little Halloween party favors and candy. Then I panicked because I wasn’t sure if the game we had in mind was good enough, so I printed out Halloween mazes and stuffed those in the treat bags too. Goddamn children.

This took about fifteen minutes, start to finish. One could imagine how exhausted I was, having single-handedly carried this entire party on my back while Henry pranced around in his underwear.

Somewhere around 10:30pm, I found out that Henry had purchased red decorating gel instead of black. RED! I cornered him in the kitchen as he mixed the cupcake batter and laid into him for being so worthless, so stupid, so irresponsible, so UNRELIABLE.

We broke up for the second time that night, but he still put his big boy pants on and went back to the store in search of black decorating gel.

By the time he came back, I noticed that he also forgot the pretzel sticks/Frankenstein neck bolts.

“I just came back! I am not going to the store again!” Henry shouted.

I raised a knife.

We broke up again.

I know, I know: Erin, why didn’t you just go to the store yourself? And let that motherfucker win?! Never. Let me remind you that the fact I haven’t eaten meat since 1996 was born from my impenetrable stubbornness. My head, it is that of a bull. (And not just because I’m that ugly.)

“Just forget it!” I screamed. “Fuck the cupcakes! I just won’t take them!”

“Fine,” Henry mumbled, pushing past me and going to sit down on the couch.

“NO I’M JUST KIDDING WE NEED THE CUPCAKES OMG GET BACK IN THERE!” I yelled, heart rate up, left arm tingling. Ew I fucking hate parties. As Henry walked by to go back in the kitchen, I muttered, “But the cupcakes are going to look pathetic since you forgot the pretzels, good job.” I saw him tense up for a second, like he maybe was contemplating pushing me into the hot stove, but then he adjusted his Susie Homemaker ruffled apron and went back to ladling batter into the cupcake tray thing.

“Did you start cooking the spaghetti yet?” I asked. We needed a lot of spaghetti noodles for the stupid game that the other moms so thoughtfully left for me to come up with.

“Can I get through the cupcakes first?” he snipped, and we broke up again.

Around 11:30, the cupcakes were cooled off and it was time to start icing them. Henry mixed up a bowl of purple frosting while I struggled with the orange. I didn’t mix it well enough, so all the cupcakes I frosted had dark orange striations throughout them, and that’s on top of the sides I smashed in from gripping too hard.

“Look,” Henry instructed. “Turn the cupcake with your other hand so the frosting goes on easier.” But as usual, I ignored his tip and continued glooping on mounds of frosting before moving on to the frustrating task of smoothing that shit out.

I started to cry. Then I screamed, slammed down the cupcake I was working on, and marched out of the kitchen.

But not before breaking up again, followed by a death threat.

“You’re a fucking retard,” I heard Henry say as he examined the three cupcakes I managed to frost before having a full-blown temper seizure. I really believe that it takes a special kind of person to be able to work with sprinkles and frosting without winding with brain matter Pollacked across the kitchen wall.

I started to watch the Jersey Shore reunion show, mouth still molded into a scowl, until I realized that I couldn’t let Henry take all the credit for the cupcakes. And he would, too. I knew it. So I went back in the kitchen and pushed Henry out of the way. He had a plateful of large marshmallows which he had previously rolled through green glittery sprinkles. I picked one up and decided to start working on the Frankenstein heads, that maybe if I concentrated real hard on that, I could block out the fact that Henry was two feet away from me, making me hate life.

By then, it was midnight.

I did that high-pitched shriek that happens when something isn’t going my way.

“What?” Henry yelled.

“THIS BLACK GEL IS TOO THICK! THIS FRANKENSTEIN IS RUINED!” I hurled it into the garbage.

“Great,” Henry said sardonically. “Now we’re going to be short one marshmallow.” Turns out there was just enough green sprinkles for fourteen marshmallows, the exact number of kids in Chooch’s class. “If you weren’t being such a BITCH, I probably could have fixed that one,” Henry sneered and I wanted to skin him alive.

“Oh you think you’re so fucking perfect!” I spat. And we broke up so badly that I created a profile on Match.com.

Whoever lives in this house after us is going to be haunted by all the ire left clinging to the walls from our mutual belligerence. And that’s assuming we both make it out alive. Otherwise, someone might want to consider taking a wrecking ball to 3021 My Street.

Being short a marshmallow, I made the executive decision to only use half and do spiderwebs on the other cupcakes. Oh great idea, Erin Rachelle. Next time, maybe try to remember that you have an unsteady hand and SUCK at decorating.

How do you bitches make this look so easy?

I was standing over the oven, dragging a toothpick over these bastards, and GRUNTING. It was excruciating! You need precision for this shit. And precision and me? We’re not friends. We’re not even frenemies. In fact, if precision turned into a zombie, I’d push everyone out of the way so I could be the one to shoot it in the motherfucking head. Precision makes me cry, you guys. And I think I have arthritis now. I fucking hate you, too, spider webs.

I hate anything to do with baking! I hate frosting! I hate food coloring! I hate the kitchen! I hate Henry!

I do like licking the batter off that mixing contraption though.

The worst part is that I kept catching Henry trying not to laugh when my sanity was very clearly slipping through my fingers like sand through an hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

Of course, they looked nothing like Frankenstein and I had a failure-induced panic attack. Then I realized that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have a variety.

“What if the kids start fighting because they all want one with a marshmallow head?” I freaked out.

“It’ll be a good lesson for them. You don’t always get what you want in life,” Henry said matter-of-factly. That’s great, but I didn’t want to be there when parts of Mr. Potato Head began flying as the kids fought each other with tinker toys and glue sticks and teachers staggered away with pencils jutting out from their femoral artery. You might be wondering what sort of impression I have in my mind of preschool classes. Obviously a very Mad Max, post-apocalyptic one.

It was nearly 1:00am by the time we finished decorating the fuckcakes. Henry and I slept in separate rooms.

FUCKERS!!!!

[Ed.Note: Henry can attest this is not an accurate account. It has been toned down. A lot.]

If every October is going to bring with it The Great Costume Conundrum of [Insert Year], then I’m about to peace out from this Halloween bullshit. I thought having children was supposed to exacerbate that childlike wonder of trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins and pushing friends into chainsaw guys? Because so far, all it has done for me is stack a metric ton of stress upon my chest. All over a goddamn costume! This shit started last year, when all of a sudden my little voiceless pet developed a mind of his own and just couldn’t decide on a costume and batted away all of my suggestions like so many filthy flies.

Immediately after his Halloween party on Friday (I will get to that tomorrow), he goes to us, “Yeah, so…I don’t want to be Ben 10 for trick or treating. I want a new costume.” OH WHAT A SURPRISE. And poor naive Chooch, he had hopeful dreams of us taking him to 12 different Spirit Halloweens while he vetoed every costume on the racks. I sat him down and explained to him that I already wasted on a piece of shit pelt of cheap fabric and he’d make due with what we already had in the house.

Which turned out to be a clown wig and bow tie.

“You can be a zombie clown,” I suggested, which was more of an order actually.

“No! I want to go get a new costume!” he stamped.

October brings out his rich kid silver spoon syndrome, I fucking swear to god. I have NO IDEA where there this comes from.

(I was more of a silver platter kind of kid.)

Halloween afternoon, it was getting down to the wire. He was still huffing about not wanting to be a zombie clown when a commercial came on for Creepy Crawlers. I wasn’t even aware that Creepy Crawlers still existed, and evidently they are a million times more disgusting than when my brother Ryan used to terrorize me with them.

“I want that,” Chooch said.

I seized the moment. “If you let me do your makeup for trick-or-treating, I will buy you that tomorrow, I freaking swear to god.” I am not ashamed of resorting to bribery. A little promise now and then can get you pretty far in life.  How do you think I get Henry to do everything I want? (I rarely pay up, though.)

We even pinkie-swore on it.

And that is how I was able to get my finicky child to sit in a chair while Henry and I tag-teamed him with costume makeup.

It’s a good thing Henry and I are makeup dunces, because we honestly were striving for a half-assed, disheveled, under-the-dock-all-night-with-a-bottle-of-Jack look. Chooch was absolutely  miserable through it all, but I kept whispering Creepy Crawlers in his ear.

Once we were done and he saw his face in the mirror (and also got Andrea‘s seal of approval), the day took a decidedly happier turn. He flew outside and readily posed for photos, while waiting anxiously for people to walk past and see him.

Some day, Chooch will realize that his mother is ALWAYS ON POINT and maybe we can eliminate all this wishy-washy, back-pedaling, mind-changing bullshit that is seriously the most miserable fucking game ever.

He hates the feel of fake blood on his face (as opposed to the real thing, which he’s been coated with way too frequently). So we tried to go easy on him.

Chooch’s cousins Zac and Steph came with us this year, which made it more fun. Trick-or-treating is meant to be done in groups! I felt bad for Chooch last year, being stuck with me and Henry. He looked so envious every time he saw flocks of children together.

Steph didn’t actually trick-or-treat, but came along as a bloodied escort. She volunteered all season at Hundred Acres Manor (where my friend Gina peed her pants) so her make-up is always disgustingly good.

Chooch and Zac got equal amounts of love from passers-by. Everyone loves a good Jason Voorhees! I noticed that most people were like, “Aw! Cute clown!” But then Chooch would get closer and they would notice the blood and his naturally sinister visage (sometimes he gets too into character and it scares me because I think it’s real), and their voices would kind of trail off.

Less than a block away from our house, some girl bit the pavement and began wailing. Henry, Steph and I just stood there, and I said, “Well, this is awkward.” And then I laughed and rolled my eyes because she barely fell that hard and it was a little excessive, this high extent of pain she was attempting to convey.

Fifteen minutes later, Chooch totally fell head first down someone’s front steps. He managed to NOT bust his front teeth through his bottom lip this time, and mostly just hurt his chest a little. It was a slow descent, and there were no wounds to show for it. But when he stood up, he looked at his hand and began sobbing. “I’m bleeding!” he cried.

It was just some of his makeup.

“I guess this is what I get for laughing when that little girl fell,” I joked inappropriately.

He cried for about thirty seconds while the residents of the houses near the scene of the accident offered encouraging and soothing words to him. Then Henry asked, “Do you want to go home?” and he sort of wiped his eyes and gave Henry this ‘hell no!’ look, then stomped off to the next house. Thank god. The tears did little to mar his painted face, which I was admittedly too preoccupied with.

After that, I practically life-flighted him down every set of steps.

And he still wiped out another three times. And the number of “close calls” was in the double digits.

“He needs a Hover-Round,” I mumbled.

“Or a Segway,” Steph added.

Chooch did much better this year than last. He actually remembered to say “trick-or-treat” at every house and didn’t get as distracted by all the Halloween yard decorations as he did last year, when we were forced to spend at least five minutes at every house while he inspected all the inflatables in the yard and dummies on the porch.

While waiting on the sidewalk in front of one of the houses, I saw their large black cat inflatable begin its slow tilt into the earth, but there were people in front of me so I couldn’t see the culprit. Once I saw it was Chooch whose ankle was caught in it, I murmured, “Of course it would be my son.”

And who knew Henry was the official coach of trick-or-treating? My god, was he bossy. “START OVER HERE AND CRISS-CROSS! NO ONE’S HOME, YOU’RE WASTING TIME! TURN DOWN THIS STREET NOW!” Jesus Christ, Henry, get a life.

Oh look, Chooch – Mommy was a clown one year too. YOU ARE SO MUCH LIKE ME.

***

This morning before school, Chooch was watching Spongebob. A commercial for Creepy Crawlers came on. “I’m getting that today, YOU SAID!” Chooch reminded me.

Fuck. I liked him better when my promises wafted away into the ether of his psychotically-whirring mind the moment they were uttered.