Some things about this picture:

• It’s from 2003
• I am wearing  my mom’s Jackie Sorensen shirt that she got when she attended some gigantic aerobics orgy back in the early 80s at the Civic Arena. (“They put down Astroturf over top of the ice and it was so neat!”) I stole this from her dresser many years ago and have cherished it ever since. Ask Henry – it is so ratty and stained that even a gutterpup would shy away from it. Jackie’s aerobics video is my favorite thing ever. It was made in the leotard-era, has a soundtrack featuring Foreigner’s “Feels Like the First Time” and  some Streisand joint that makes for some excellent stretching motivation, and features a back-up exerciser who bears an uncanny resemblance to Tim Curry’s Frank-n-Furter.
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  I used to get drunk and bust out Jackie-approved moves, such as the taffy pull, in the basement of my old house while my friends watched in horror. The Internet just showed me that there is old school Jackie apparel available for purchase. OH, SANTA I haven’t been very good but I will dole out some oral pleasures for a purple Dancing Queen sweatshirt.

• I REALLY need my blond hair back.
• I have no idea what I’m eating, but my hand sure makes a deep bowl.
• Henry took down my Cure wall-hanging when he was painting last year and never hung it back up.
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  I don’t think that was by accident, either.

Some things about this picture:

• We were en route to Lancaster in 2003, lol.
• I was eating pretzels.
• I have an affinity for showing Henry the masticated contents of my mouth, unprovoked, and he acts like he doesn’t care but we all know that’s secretly the reason why he has stayed with me for ten years now.
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• Henry has the same pair of glasses only now they are so crooked that he has to slide them all the way down the bridge of his nose just to be able to see. He blames this on me and Chooch for being too rough with him, but everyone knows Chooch and I are delicate little flowers in a garden of patience.

Guys, stop what you’re doing! I have a guest post today over at Brandy’s blog! To keep with a Christmas theme, I lent her the best original recipe I have ever created and she was brave enough to share it. And it’s a good thing too because I am feeling a little burnt out.

But I want you to promise me something! While you’re over there, read some of her other posts too. Her blog has everything from DIY ideas, weekly confessionals, really incredible pictures, the cutest dog, and just all-around great stories about her life. She is really fantastic. And come on, you know how few blog friends I have, so it must be true! I only pimp out the things I actually love.

Now go bake those cookies!

In other news, I am on the phone with my friend Lisa right now while she searches for her nose ring in her car. (She called while I was in the middle of writing this, which is why I discovered an hour later that I completely left a sentence unfinished. GOOD JOB LISA.)

We were supposed to get some big shot snow storm today, so Henry made me cancel all my plans.

That means I was stuck in the house all day with these assholes.

They’ve been monopolizing my phone like, all day.

I got nothing accomplished during this unwarranted house arrest except for yoga, watching the Capitals get raped by the Rangers, and ruining Henry’s cupcakes by throwing a fistful of marshmallows into each unbaked cup.

Fuck winter.

October 24th, 2006

Christina left for Ohio Sunday afternoon, a few hours before a bogus bomb scare made for some hot Greyhound terminal-evacuating. Our weekend was steeped with making fools of ourselves in a mélange of haunted houses, turning baby-oriented television programming into politically-incorrect satire which made Henry tug uncomfortably at his collar and even leave the room, and making Chooch cry in horror as we rehearsed the theatrical laughs which I assigned to us. Mine was modeled after Tom Hulce’s Amadeus, but it packed a bonus ladling of gravy by way of an over-the-top walloping shrill which almost made Henry shit his pants when I spontaneously debuted it; Christina’s was based on Phil Collins’ maniacal scoffing in the Genesis song “Mama,” with a dry-heaving emphasis on the final Hah. We unleashed these well-honed peals of obnoxiousness at a haunted house on Saturday night, much to the chagrin of those forced to accompany us.

***

It was so stupid how it happened, too. So juvenile. I emailed her out of the blue that summer, after six months of ice cold silence, pretending that while I was cleaning I had unearthed the memory box she made me, as if it hadn’t been sitting out on a shelf in plain view ever since she sent it to me. In the email, I said, “If you want it back, let me know. Otherwise I am just going to pitch it.” It took her a week to reply; she didn’t have Internet access at her house anymore, she apologized, and went on to say that she wanted me to have the memory box. But if I was only going to throw it away, then yes, she would take it back.

That was all it took to open the lines of communication again, to draw her out, because I knew she needed that prodding. Christina would never contact me on her own, not when she was that afraid of me.

I thought it would be weird when she came back into my life that August, four months after Riley was born, yet we had picked up right where we left off, as if no time had passed at all. As if she had not missed the birth of my son.

I was now a mother.

We had spent half a year a part.

She was back with Sylvia.

But I wanted her back in my life. I wanted her to know my son. I was willing to forget the past and start over. Even after she admitted to me that while I was pregnant, she had secretly hoped I would give birth to an ugly baby. I can still hear her saying that and it makes me recoil slightly, like she’s still slapping me in the face from 300 miles away.

Her appearance was different. Startlingly different, and when she walked up to my front door that day, for the first time after we put it all behind us, I thought she was a Mexican man who had the wrong address. She had cut her hair really short. Gained a lot of weight. I attributed this to the fact that she was shacking up with Sylvia. (If I felt Sylvia was the best I could do, I’d probably let myself go, too.) My inner shallowness used this as a weapon to completely annihilate any lingering feeling, glimmer of attraction, or dusty residue of desire that may have carried over to 2006 in spite of all the drama and disgust she had crapped upon my life, like an entire season of Jersey Shore with dysentery. I assumed the same went for her – I still had a tender C-section scar and a spare tire of elastic flesh sagging around my torso. Figured that should be more than enough to make her want to puke at any sexual thought about me.

(It is here I remind myself to look up the definition for naivete and then cold-cock myself with the dictionary.)

People weren’t happy that Christina and I had reunited. On her side, it was her family and Sylvia. I can’t remember when it happened, if it was right then or a little after, but Christina and Sylvia’s 1587th go-around eventually perished; with me back in the picture, Sylvia was presenting her predictable “Her or me!” ultimatum. And on my end, it was Henry who was groaning and making silent predictions for how long this particular tap dance down Crazy Lane would last. But Chooch took to her immediately, and that made Henry soften. Christina treated that baby like he was her own family, which was definitely more than my own family was doing. Seeing her with Chooch, it made it easier for me to forget the last year.

Christina was good about keeping her thoughts to herself. So good that I didn’t even realize she was even still having those sort of thoughts. I assumed we had finally made it, finally arrived to that mesa in our lives where we realized platonic friendship was the only thing we were meant to have. And for the first time since we met, we were able to talk on the phone daily and hang out more than twice a year without all the blood pressure-raising screaming matches, whining, and sexual overtones. We would have long and deep conversations about how much we meant to each other and both promised to never let anyone try to tear apart our friendship again. We would make memories like the one at the start of this entry and it would make me think, “I could never have this with anyone else.” It would make me think all the shit was worth it, all those tears and heavy hearts, to have these moments, our own little private microcosm of giddiness and inside jokes.

We were too dumb back then to realize that the only ones tearing away our friendship was each other. It was just easier to blame all the Alishas and Sylvias and Onnas, but if we had the faith in each other that we so stupidly assumed we had, maybe we would have been able to block out the naysayers. Maybe we would have had enough respect for ourselves and each other to cold shoulder those nagging emotions that made us repeatedly “try it one more time! This time it will work!” Maybe we would have realized that we were forcing two pieces to fit together like a toddler attempting his first puzzle while his fat mother was busy watching her stories.

I needed her to be my friend. But she was always going above and beyond that, doing things for me that no other friend has ever done, defending me against every little shitty comment slung toward me on LiveJournal, in life, from my family. She made herself so available to me, made me depend on her more than I should  (she even admitted once to doing that on purpose), that it made it hard for me to really have any other friends because she set the bar so motherfucking high. She was my rock, the only person who believed in me. Why would I want to talk to anyone else when they wouldn’t say half the wonderful things to me as Christina would? When they wouldn’t even come close to understanding me like Christina did?

This is how I fucked myself. This is how, even though I had a new baby, Henry and the most golden of best friends, I was lonelier than I ever had been. Which is exactly what she wanted.

***

I have no intention of stopping this without resolution, but I don’t have that nagging urge to purge anymore. The truth is, writing everything this far has helped me get over it. I no longer think of her and feel that torturous tear in my heart, not since that night last August that found me sharing a bench in front of the Holiday Inn with Jessy, projectile vomiting into her lap all my feelings on this subject. Ever since then, I no longer regret not having that one last parting conversation with Christina.  I have no hate, no love, only ambivalence. I have not once even attempted to find out what she’s doing, where she is, how she is, who she’s with (because, well, isn’t that obvious?). Because I know she will never change. Christina’s life is like a stagnant pond – it will always be there, still and reeking, maybe just with different diseased pests hovering above it.

This thing I shared with her for six years, it has, through a year of hashing and re-hashing, metemorphized from a relationship into something of a sterile noumenon, this thing that I will no longer allow myself to look back upon fondly but rather store in my mind as an experience from which I learned to stop giving so many motherfucking chances.

The year was 2000 and I was standing in a parking lot with my dad, having just eaten dinner together at Olive Garden.

“Do you need any money?” he asked, reaching for his wallet like all good daddies do.

“Actually,” I mused, considering his offer. “I’ll take all your quarters if you have any.”

He looked at me strangely before rummaging in his pockets for loose change. I cupped my palms as my dad poured in a chunk of quarters.

I arrived at the Best Buy up the street just as an employee was pulling down the gates.

“We’re closed,” he said apologetically as I pressed my nose sadly against the door.

“I don’t need all the way in the store!” I said desperately. “Just need to get right there,” and I pointed at the row of vending machines in the small foyer between the two sets of automatic doors.

The employee let me duck under the gate and watched as I inserted all my quarters into the same machine, two at a time, cranking the dispenser wheel until it shat, one by one, tiny plastic capsules stuffed with Homies.

I was at the height of my Homies addiction that year, transported them in a metal Krishna lunchbox to and from work. Lined them up on my desk and smiled at them. Used them to put on plays for my cats. Considered giving up smoking so I could jam the extra money into vending machines all over the tri-state area, expanding my Homies collection from a tenement to a motherfucking barrio.

Every holiday season, there was always this one thing I was itching to do: Build a house of gingerbread and turn it into a crack house for my very best Homies.

Problem was that I’m not actually into the construction of gingerbread houses.

Seems tedious to me.

Two weeks ago I learned that Chooch would be making his own gingerbread house at school! Unfortunately, this required each child to bring an adult to school that day. I reminded Henry that I took one  for the team in October when I chaperoned that hellacious field trip to the pumpkin patch, and that he best take a motherfucking half-day.

Henry did just that, too. Together, he and Chooch spent the morning as carpenters of sugared shacks, and when they came home I was finally able to realize my dream of having a gingercrack house.

Ten years in the making and so satisfying.

The other day, Chooch’s class got to do the Santa Shop thing. I took him to school with a check in the envelope the school sent home with him, which had room to list who we wanted the kid to shop for, and how much to spend on each person.

Henry figured $3 was enough for everyone, but I wanted very badly to scrawl “Sky’s the limit” next to “Mom” and “.05” next to “Dad.” We also included Blake, Henry’s sister and mom, and Tommy and Jessy got to go under the “special friends” category. Special friends? Isn’t that what the dirty drunk down the street says to all the little girls to get them to lift their dresses?

I have no idea what was going through Chooch’s mind when it was his turn to peruse the tables of merch. He brought back a bag of crap, obviously – I wouldn’t expect anything more from Santa Shop – but the problem was that I wasn’t sure how the crap was supposed to be distributed. Whatever he got for me (and it was the most expensive thing he bough according to the tally on the returned envelope!), he immediately snatched and disappeared into his room with it.

Then there was a hot pink rubber popper, the likes of which I haven’t seen since 1989-era gumball machines.

“That’s for Tommy!” he yelled. Of course it is! He’s a hunter, I’m sure he can find a use for it. (And once he does, I’m calling PETA.)

A tiny alien attached to a parachute, just what Blake always wanted.

Some small stuffed toy, which was originally for Aunt Kelly, but then it was for Grandma Judy. In the end, Chooch seemed to have claimed it for himself. So I don’t know.

Jessy got probably the nicest thing out of the lot – a set of very kawaii erasers, which I’m sure is something she waits for every night on QVC. “Oh please let Smiling Ice Cream Cone Eraser hour be on tonight!” I imagine she says every night when she dons her Hello Kitty robe and curls up with her manga collection.

And of course – cat toys. He went .50 cents over budget for motherfucking cat toys! Ew, I was so pissed.

“It’s not about the gifts or the money,” Henry reasoned with me over the phone. “It’s about the learning experience and independence of shopping alone.” Oh well look at Mr. Parenting Handbook. Easy for him to say when he’s not the one who wrote the fucking check to fund this educational experience!

The cats fucking loved their little plush mice, though.

Thirty seconds later, Chooch ripped the tail off one (a toy, not a cat) and then also broke his stuffed toy. (It’s some garishly colored insect – a dragonfly maybe?)

When I was a kid, I bought much better gifts. What? I did! And I’m sure none of it ever turned anyone’s skin green.

“Hey,” I said, holding up the bag. “You didn’t get anything for daddy?”

“Yeah I did,” Chooch replied snottily, sitting on the couch eating a candy cane.

“Well what is it?” I asked, looking in the bag again to see if I missed something. Like an invisible fence for daddies.

“This candy cane!” Chooch said irritably, plucking it from his mouth to show me.

***

When Henry came home from work that day, Chooch wanted to show him what he got me so he brought it back downstairs all secretly. Then, standing three feet away from me, he hoarsely whispered to Henry, “It’s for mommy.”

“I know,” Henry whispered back.

“It’s a snowman!” Chooch continued in a loud whisper.

“I know,” Henry answered, not bothering to whisper now.

“Don’t tell her what it is! It’s for Christmas.”

At least he brought home change.

I’m on the way to work and just got a tweet from Alternative Press announcing some early bands playing at next summer’s Warped Tour.

Hysterical shrieking commenced.

“I can’t wait until you’re old enough to go by yourself,” Henry mumbled with absolutely no feeling, at the same time Chooch reminded me, “You don’t have to shout about it!”

There was a special holiday pre-sale going on and you better believe I snatched one up. I want my motherfucking commemorative ornament.

Some old ass cemetery in Lancaster, PA

Chooch is already asking if we’re going to have our traditional Christmas picnic in the cemetery and I think that’s so awesome that it’s already become a “thing” for him. We didn’t get to do it last year because it rained pretty steadily on Christmas, but we had a little post-Christmas cupcake snack on a drier day.  The cemetery picnics were something that started in ’05 when I was pregnant and we had no where else to go on Christmas because my family was being a basket of dicks. It kind of just stuck after that, even after my family took me back. We grab some snacks, some plastic bottles of eggnog from the convenience store, a blanket if we remember, and eat while shivering amongst graves. I don’t think Henry enjoys it, but Chooch and I do and isn’t it really all about pleasing the children?

All my life, I’ve had encounters with people who think it’s “weird” or “unhealthy” to have a fascination of cemeteries. I’m sure Chooch will eventually run into these same types of people who will crinkle their noses and attempt to make him feel like there is something wrong with him for pointing out the car window and yelling, “Cemetery! Let’s go!” just like he did in Lancaster. But hopefully he will be able to brush that shit off like I do. It’s not like we’re digging up dead bodies, for Christ’s sake.

Christmas 2008

Someday I will make a photobook filled entirely with all of Chooch’s cemetery photos and then all his friends will be like, “Dude, you have the best baby pictures ever!” and I will sneer in the faces of their parents.

What kind of holiday traditions do you have?

Billy Nedermeijer arrived at his friend Patty Dogwood’s house with a bottle of Lambrusco and a cube of cheddar. Inside, he found the house atwitter with idle chitchat and soft music humming from a hidden stereo.

There was a large, oblong crate in the middle of the room, atop which Dixie cups and crumbled napkins had been absently discarded.

Billy’s friend Pietro arrived behind him, a small box wrapped in joyful floral tucked under his sweat-stained pit.

“What is this, a birthday party?” Billy asked with a sarcastic laugh.

“Yeah, that’s what my invitation said,” Pietro responded, his caterpillar brow flexing.

Billy glanced around the room and found his sister Yvette with a basket of matzoh. He wove his way over to her, and her answer to his kosher inquiry was, “This is a seder, is it not?”

Confused and slightly panicked, Billy withdrew his invitation from his blazer pocket. It clearly said “Come get wined and cheesed” in yellow comic sans.

Swiveling, he noted that Amber Flushbum was holding a battered Trivial Pursuit and Kevin Kickscrotum, clad in fluorescent mesh, was corkscrewing two pink glowsticks in the air.

Just then, Patty made her grand entrance, her lazy eye obstructed by the thick black veil which draped from her crown.

“Friends, thank you all for coming to my little soiree.” And with a dramatic flourish, she wrenched open the lid of the crate, causing an avalanche of red plastic cups and cookie-crumbed napkins to cascade to the floor.

Inside was the rotting corpse of her mother, her mouth frozen in a twisted snarl.

Little gasps burst throughout the room like breathy firecrackers. Beverages were dropped to the carpet in shock. The person in the kangaroo suit passed out by the foyer, but not before the unfortunate situation caused them to drop a deuce in their panties.

Pandemonium rippled through the house. “I thought this was a baby shower!!

“—game night!”
“—key bowl party!”
“—porno exchange!”
“—furry club!”

Patty laughed sadly, and began to choke. She raised a red Dixie cup filled to the brim with Billy’s Lambrusco and took a hearty swig to wash down the piece of matzoh that had become snagged in her esophagus.

“No my friends, I sent out those invitations because I couldn’t find any that said, ‘Come Celebrate the Murder of My Rapist Mother’.”

[Original painting available on Etsy. Great Christmas gift for your garbageman!]

The other day, one of my co-workers asked if we were taking Chooch to see Santa.

“Well,” I began hesitantly. “Since we’re so…’alternative,'” and if I had my quotation tattoos on my fingers like I want so badly, I wouldn’t have had to go through all the effort of BENDING them into air quotes, “we’re taking him to see Zombie Santa.”

She looked at me strangely for a split second, then threw her head back in laughter. Behind me, Barb wasn’t even fazed. She’s sat near me long enough now that nothing I say or do really shocks her. To Barb, this was just another family outing for the Kelly-Robbins clan.

And that is just what we did Saturday night at Monroeville Mall. My friend Kim was there with her boyfriend Chris, so that was cool because I don’t really see her very often. Kim got me into my first bar when I was 17, so she will always be special to me! I can remember sitting at the Blue Rock in Port Vue, being very obviously underage and getting trashed off of Seabreezes. Lisa (she’s the one who introduced me to Kim) kept taking the drinks away from me and every time she would look away, Kim would push another toward me.

Kim also tried to talk me out of getting my hair cut at some shitty Fantastic Sams or Bo-Rics when I was 18 but I wouldn’t listen to her and wound up walking out in tears and wearing a scarf around my head for weeks. In August.

I think we also ate donut holes that day at my house with Lisa?

It was nice to have them to talk to while Chooch ran around Time and Space Toys, yelling CAN I HAVE THIS I WANT THIS. I hope Kim knows I wasn’t joking when I said she can borrow him anytime she wants. ANYTIME.

Zombie Santa was finally ready so we all walked into the back where the zombie museum is set up and Chooch nervously sat down. He couldn’t even look at the scantily clad elves, let alone allow any of them to get in the picture with him. Apparently, zombie girls make Chooch very shy.

Hey Erin, try to remember to check the settings on the camera once in awhile. Christ.

There was a table of COOKIES set up that we got to enjoy while waiting for the Santa picture to be printed out for us. There was one particular powdered sugar cookie that I was really feeling. It wasn’t a Russian teacake, but nearly as wonderful. While we ate cookies and repeatedly said, “No,” to all of Chooch’s begging, Kim and Chris mentioned that they had been thinking about going roller skating and I nearly choked on my tongue that’s how fast I said I was up for it. Like I would ever say no to rollerskating. So Kim, if you’re reading this – set that shit up!

It’s always the same people playing zombies at these events so I’m beginning to recognize them now. Chooch’s girlfriend from the Zombie Car Wash was there as a (SUPER HOT) bloody elf, so we forced him to get his picture taken with her. He didn’t want to wait his turn so the security guard who was having his picture taken at the time eventually just called Chooch over to join him.

Chooch walked in while I was having my lips frosted and said, “You’re the biggest idiot, Mommy.”

“Did you already post those pictures?” Henry asked after saying my post-frosted face looks like a chemical burn. When I said I had, he looked all let down. Turns out he wanted me to take a picture of my stained face and tell Andrea that her My Pretty Zombie makeup tried to kill me. He’s just mad because she sent Chooch a whistle.

The last words I said to Chooch and Henry before leaving last Sunday afternoon was, “I won’t be gone long. We’re just having lunch.” Sure, I hadn’t seen Lindsay and Lauren since senior year of high school so I was sure we’d have a lot to talk about, but never expected that our lunch would creep into dinner and my tab would be over $70 – 95% of which was for the FOUR BOTTLES OF WINE that Lindsay and I chugged between the two of us alone.

I typically avoid people from high school, but Lauren was my first friend in elementary school. We built giant rabbit nests together during recess one day by gathering armfuls of cut grass. You didn’t know rabbits need nests? Then I guess Lauren and I were just ecological geniuses.

I have tons of pictures of her throughout elementary school, from birthday parties, school Halloween parties, bullshit Girl Scouts outings. I was tempted to scan them and post them here, but then Henry reminded me shit like that is why I have no friends.

And Lindsay! She moved to my street in eighth grade from the CITY. I felt like since maybe sometimes my mom gave her rides to school, that maybe some of her urban flava would rub off on me, so my Cross Colours wardrobe would maybe look less ridiculous on my lily white suburban body, but Lindsay would consistently remind me that I was a dork, so I guess osmosis is a fucking joke!

Lindsay and Lauren have been best friends since high school, so I was a little intimidated walking into The Library that day. Plus, they were cooler than me in high school.

But then Lindsay yelled, “YOU LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME!” and I thought, “OK, if she’s going to keep saying shit like that, this will be fine.” And within minutes I had my first of 7854952 glasses of riesling, which quickly had me opening up about my stint as a faux-lesbian and the great lengths I went to stalk Scott Dambaugh in 8th grade (and possibly a great many grades beyond).

Lindsay dropped a bombshell on me by mentioning that one of our friends lost her virginity to him back in high school.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I slurred-yelled all dramatically, lurching forward.

“You didn’t know?!” Lindsay laughed.

Obviously not!

I told them about how a certain motherfucker who to this day I still want to fight in an alleyway even if she outweighs me by 300 pounds and is oft mistaken for a man tried to spread rumors in high school about me being a whore.

“I don’t remember you being a whore!” Lauren said, laughing. “I remember you bringing your tree frog to school in your purse!”

And are tree frog smugglers whore? I didn’t think so!

Every time the bartender came over to replenish our wine glasses and bring Lauren a new beer, he would ask, “Ready to order any food yet?” By the third hour, we finally acquiesced and split two orders of appetizers three-ways. Obviously, it wasn’t nearly enough to balance out the gallons of alcohol Lindsay and I were pumping into our system, and by the fourth hour, she was drunk-dialing Henry after I readily shared his phone number, despite Lauren shaking her head and urging me not to give it to her.

Lauren probably felt like a goddamn babysitter. Next time, it’s her turn to get trashed! We owe her.

At one point, I looked out the window and was shocked to see that it was dark. This was about the time the wine and severe lack of carbs started to get to both Lindsay and me. I had an incident after peeing where I felt hot-flashy and was sure I was going to puke, but I somehow breathed my way through it. Also, realizing that Lindsay was worse off than myself helped sober me up a little bit. Especially after she went outside and, how can I phrase this delicately, decorated the sidewalk of East Carson Street like it was a Christmas tree and her stomach contents was all the pretty, if not ecru, tinsel. People walking by didn’t pay much attention though, because sidewalk pukers are standard fixtures on the Southside, even on Sunday afternoons. Maybe.

Lauren and I signaled for the bartender and had him bring her a glass of water and a warm, soft pretzel which she refused to eat so Lauren and I picked at it and it came with this really great cheese sauce but I didn’t say that in front of Lindsay.

A sobering moment for me was when we got the check, which was $166 – nearly $140 of that was made up of wine. As Lauren sent the bartender away to split the wine between Lindsay and me, and the food in thirds, I laughed nervously and said, “Good thing I work in a law firm!” and then immediately texted Henry and said, “OMG I AM SO SORRY.”

But it was worth it. They both had so much juicy gossip to divulge, it was everything I had hoped it would be, plus a few extra chapters for my upcoming blackmail novel. I can’t wait to do it again! Only next time, I hope the night doesn’t end with my bedroom spinning while Henry is stuffing my lifeless body into pajamas.

I know, I know, boring hockey shit. Boo, Oh Honestly Erin! But I can’t fucking quit watching Crosby’s third goal. How do you DO THAT? I am obviously very excited about this. You can ask Chooch. I wouldn’t get him pretzels until he finally conceded to watching this on my phone.

He is just…I can’t even. For once I have no words. Look how short all these sentences are!

The last thing I did in Lancaster was buy this “7 on the Creep-o-Meter” papier mâché clown at Dutch Haven, while Pretty Poison’s “Catch Me I’m Falling” played on the store’s soundsystem.

Henry bought soft pretzels and homemade root beer. Pretty much everything Henry bought that weekend could be consumed. He’s not one for souvenirs.

After Dutch Haven, we parted ways with Tommy & Jessy and stopped for a little while in Hershey, because no way was I passing up a jaunt through Chocolate World.

The ride-through tour of the simulated chocolate factory doesn’t cost a dime, but it spits you out right into a chocolate-covered palace of consumerism; $20 later we were walking back to the car, Chooch with two plush Hershey characters stowed under his arms.

Fucking Chocolate World. I did think it was nice though that Hersheys employed a retarded kid to hand out miniature bars of defected candy after the tour, even if he was a bit slow at it.

Then we saw hot air balloons while on our way to eat at the Capitol Diner, where we eavesdropped on a booth of family members lecturing an 18-year-old girl about statutory rape (her boyfriend is 15; she haughtily wailed, “I don’t want to go into the world being afraid of everything!”); meanwhile, the middle-aged retarded man at their table ordered something he didn’t like, causing his mom to scold, “That’s what you get for not asking me first!”

He probably just got done with his shift at Chocolate World; lay off, Ma!

The manager of Capitol Grill thought my fingerless gloves were casts and openly pitied me while I paid at the register. When he realized they were Pacman gloves, he announced this wildly to everyone sitting in that section of the restaurant and I left there with strangers staring at me.

We got home around 8:30 that night to a gnarly spider luxuriating on a giant web on our front porch, but you already know about Sir.

On the days he has school, it always works out that Chooch gets a seriously pernicious bug up his ass which conveniently coincides with Henry’s arrival home from work.

I don’t know what set him off this afternoon – he wanted a piece of tape and somehow Henry managed to succeed in fucking this up, and suddenly we had a riot on our hands.

Standing on the stairs, tears parachuting from his eyes and a demonic glower emanating from within, Chooch shouted in a voice that sounded nothing like his own, “You fucker! I’m going to tell Santa to stab you with a knife, Daddy, you fucker!” 

(At least Henry can take comfort in the fact that his son doesn’t want to have to kill him himself, right?)

I’m sure it’s in really bad form for the mother to laugh during an outburst like this, but my god. He was so seriously pissed, and have you ever seen a four-year-old seriously pissed? It’s fucking funny. So I laughed. Openly laughed.

“What are you laughing at?” Chooch snarled at me, his voice quaking with histrionics, and I prepared to clean up the split pea soup.

However, Chooch has never threatened to put out a hit on me, so that clearly means I’m the favorites parent here.