I think I mentioned last week that I’ve been trying to take a picture a day of Marcy, mostly because she is so hated among my friends. I’ve been having fun with it (when I remember to do it) because the look of disdain Marcy flashes me each time is priceless.

Seriously you guys – when/if  Marcy dies, stick a fork in me.

Looking down on me. (Everyone’s favorite sport!)

Skeptical of one of Chooch’s toys

Fishy kisses!

Marcy Dorklestein, early for class.

The Reigning Queen

In other weekend news, I obviously survived my first real life ghost hunt! It was an amazing, visceral experience and I have no idea I will put it all into words.

But trust that there will be a write-up about it sometime this week, with photos. And there was more rollerskating today! So far, the winter is losing the war against my sanity. Fuck off, winter depression.

Sometime during dinner at King’s after roller skating last week, Kim managed to twist my arm into not only joining the local ghost hunting group she and Chris belong to, but also to RSVP for the upcoming hunt which takes place tomorrow night at an abandoned elementary school. The group organizer sent out an email reminding everyone to bring their flashlight(s) and extra batteries, as there is obviously no electricity flowing through this desolate site. (And no working facilities, either, though there will be buckets. The first twinge of my bladder and I am OUT of there.)

I was whining about the flashlight thing at work today, because I know Henry isn’t going to let me borrow his. He is oddly possessive of his flashlight. My co-worker Jeannie mentioned that she had flashlights in her desk, and Barb and I were like, “Yeah right.” But Jeannie led me back to her office and sure enough, she had two little flashlights inside a desk drawer. Plus extra batteries, even! What a fucking lifesaver she is.

[Also, Jeannie had the balls to wear purple on black and gold day, as did I, so she is definitely one of my favorite co-workers of all time. (When Steelers-lovin’ co-workers gave me the stink eye, Barb kept trying to defend me by saying things like, “She’s not wearing purple! It’s eggplant! Merlot! Burgandy!” No, it’s INTENTIONAL! Ugh, I hate the Steelers.)]

When I came back to my desk, Barb was all, “Now that I think about it, I actually have a flashlight too.” What the fuck, was The Law Firm giving them away as Christmas gifts?

So now I have three miniature flashlights and extra batteries. Don’t worry, I’ll be stealing Henry’s gigantic industrial flashlight too. I’m sure he can go one night without sexing it.

In the car today, I cried to Henry about my fear of dying at the hand of  paranormal activity.

“What if I don’t make it out alive? Then we can’t go roller skating on Sunday!”

“Oh, we’ll still go roller skating,” Henry corrected, motioning between himself and Chooch, and at the sight of my appalled expression, he continued, “What? You won’t even be laid out until at least Monday. We’ll be fine to go skating.”

My other concern is being possessed by some ridiculously dark spirit while I’m there. Crab-walking and involuntary head-spins really aren’t my thing.

“It can’t be any worse than what’s already in you,” Henry wagered.

OMG I’m scared.

“What about ghosts?” Chooch asked after Henry urged him to stop putting his weener on things.

“If you can find one, fine,” Henry said tiredly, followed by a sigh and exhausted eye rub. Henry knows when to avoid an argument; living with me for all these years has made him a seasoned pro at it. He knows that had he said “Not even on a ghost!

” Chooch would have just continued on down the line.

“A hot air balloon?”

“No.”

“Jason Voorhees?”

“Not if you want to keep it.”

“Sarah Palin’s eyeballs?”

“Ew no!”

It’s a futile war we’re fighting. Chooch is a boy, for Christ’s sake.

Ain’t no way, no how, he’s going to stop using everything at his fingertips as a weener rest. I know I wouldn’t. I’d have mine cloaked in a fur pelt and stuffed inside the hose of a vaccuum cleaner RIGHT NOW.

When I ran into Kim and her boyfriend Chris last month at the Zombie Santa shindig, she mentioned that they were thinking of going roller skating sometime; I invited myself quicker than I snatch the cherry from Henry’s milkshake. It was a given that Henry was going to want to come along too; he’s like Brian Boitano on wheels, after all.

“It smells like alcohol out here,” Chooch said as we staked our places in the line that was slightly snaked out the door. I’m not sure how he knows what alcohol smells like, but we weren’t in any sort of company that would have flinched at his statement.

Henry was still pissing around, trying to find a pair of skates that would fit Chooch, when the session officially started. I couldn’t bear to miss a second, so I ditched them there on the bench. When I came back around, Chooch was kneeling on the bench, arms folded, watching me with a big dimpled smile. “You were awesome, Mommy!” he enthused, and I was kind of like, “Um, yeah, no shit” but instead I graciously thanked him for his obvious statement.

Last year, Chooch was able to wear those plastic jobs that slip over the shoe. His feet are too big for that now so he had to wear a real pair, which was interesting. Every time he tried to stand, his feet flew right out from under him. I might make him wear a pair all the time around the house to maybe thwart his desire to ever try and be mobile again.

I’m always afraid that I’m going to step out onto that glorious wooden rink and find that my ability to glide with the grace of Princess Di’s hand during a royally rusty trombone has gone out of style faster than Katy Perry. (What, people still like her? Oh.) Good news, I’m still fabulous! The only difference is that now that I’m an adult, I’m higher up, and thinking of the consequences of falling really scares the shit out of me. Because if I fall? With my luck? It’s going to be less bruises, more open fractures. I find that I spend more time focusing on avoiding the amateurs and maniac kids, and less time getting my Anita Baker-circa-Same-Ole-Love-video groove on. (I’ve been watching A LOT of VH1 Soul. A LOT.)

Henry finally had both his skates and Chooch’s skates efficiently laced and was gingerly easing him onto the rink. Motherly Obligations began nagging at me, so I slowed to a stop as I came around to the rink opening. Henry could tell that the last thing I wanted to be doing was having a 4-year-old rollerskating virgin holding me down, so he said, “Just go,” shooing me away with one Bo Brady hand. Thank god Henry is All Parent.

Kim is a good skater, so we were able to skate around and converse (as best as we could over the pulsating Kiss FM beats) like we were leisurely strolling through Kensington Park (London on my mind, I guess), while wobbly skaters attempted to pull us down with them. We both bemoaned the fact that too  much shitty Top 40 was playing, though. AND NO LADY GAGA THIS TIME, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Do you even know how majestic that broad’s jams sound in a roller rink? Best skating music ever. I felt so deprived. I mean, can you give us a little K$sha at least? Jesus Christ.

Chris is not as much of a whiz on wheels as Kim and I, so he seemed fine with keeping a slow, staccato pace with Henry and Chooch.

“Look, it’s My Two Dads,” I laughed as Kim and I glided past.

“Or Two and A Half Men,” Kim added, as we smoked past them a second time.

Kim and I stayed out together for all the Couple Skates, which I’m sure Chris and Henry didn’t mind one bit. But I wasn’t sure we could pull off 12 and Under, so we joined the guys in the snack area, where Chooch was inhaling a Drumstick.

“I keep getting yelled at!” Henry complained. “The rink ref keeps telling me to take off my hat, because there’s such a great chance a fucking beanie is going to fall off my head!” he spat with sarcasm. (Now that I think about it, he probably didn’t actually say ‘fucking.’ Henry doesn’t swear that much; he was in the choir once, after all.)

“Oh my god, did he blow the whistle at you, too!?” I cried, hanging on to every drip of Henry’s disdain.

“No! I don’t know!” he yelled in a fluster.  “Oh look at that, it’s Immature Girl Skate. Better get out there!”

Soon it was time for Backward Skate and that is the ONE THING in the whole entire world that I simply cannot do. (Seriously! I’m typically an all-around wunderkind) I used to be able to, when I was a much more dainty young girl. But Kim assured me that it wasn’t something you lost the ability for, and strong-armed me into joining her and the other 20 or so skaters brave enough to partake in this unnatural direction of motion. It made me think back to the night before, when Barb, Mary, Kaitlin and I left the hockey game and the wind was so frigid and fierce that Barb decided to walk backward through the parking lot, and I remembered all those casually-strewn cadavers and acid-filled potholes in her path that I was too aloof to warn her about (she narrowly escaped them on her own), and I wondered if I would have the same luck.

Let me just say that no, skating backward does not so much come back naturally.

I never did get into the groove of it; my feet felt awkward and I kept finding that my legs would start to bow out and I feared that it was only a matter of time I would be forced into a split.

“You have to look over your shoulder!” Kim laughed every time I would come close to reverse-humping a stranger behind me. I whined through the entire skate. And it just happened to be the LONGEST SONG EVER, too. I can’t even remember (on purpose) but I feel like it was possibly Strawberry Letter 23. That song can now and forever get fucked.

There was one Couple Skate left, and Kim graciously offered to sit with Chooch so Henry and I could make roller love together. It was Gentlemen’s Choice, but we all know Henry doesn’t get any choices. I grabbed his hand and used brute force to tug him alongside me. He lucked out, because when Gentlemen’s Choice was announced, he was clear on the other side of the rink, stumbling along at a snail’s pace with Chooch, so by the time he even made it to where I was standing, like a PRETTY LADY-IN-WAITING (only with less parasols and corsets and more Silly Putty ground into sweatshirts), the fucking song was half over.

“Too bad they already played my Bruno Mars jam! I wanted to skate with you to that SO BAD!” I cried.

“Yeah. Too bad,” Henry mumbled. One day recently, I made a play list with Bruno Mars’s “Grenade,” “Can’t Be Friends” by Trey Songz and the sultry Miguel hit “All I Want Is You” (featuring J. Cole! Don’t forget J. Cole!) and then played it on repeat for at least 7 hours and I guess that didn’t do much to persuade Henry to like any of those joints. I can’t even remember what wound up sound-tracking our Couples Skate, but it definitely didn’t inspire me to conceive a child in the men’s room.

I do know it wasn’t All04-One’s “I Swear” because that had already been played during an All Skate. That song is so fucking lame, I’m so fucking mad that I was just reminded of it right now. Fuck.

4:00 approached us way too quickly, and it was time to return our skates. Leaving the rink, Chooch proclaimed that it still smelled like alcohol out there.

***

The five of us went to King’s for dinner. While Chris and Chooch watched ghost videos on Henry’s phone, the subject of Justin Bieber somehow came up.

“What’s he going to do when his voice changes?” I wondered out loud. “He’s going to be fucked.”

“Didn’t that happen to someone else?” Henry asked, trying to be a part of things.

“Um yeah. Peter Brady,” I said, earning a “fuck you” look from Henry.

***

Thank god I found Henry’s diary entry from that day.

Clearly my “to, too, two” tutorial has not helped Henry.

I was attempting to do a 365 photo project featuring Marcy, since she is so WELL-LOVED, but I’ve already missed days & lost count. And it’s only the second week.

Show me pics of your furry faves!

Last night, I couldn’t stop laughing because Henry, with his glasses off and beanie pulled tight over his forehead, looked like if Bo Brady from Days of Our Lives was about to take the Fancy Face out for a fishing trip.  Of course, all Henry did was frown when I started shouting about how uncanny the resemblance was and how I’d like to be his Hope so we could go knock one back at good old Shenanigans.

(Best picture I have right now. Perhaps he’ll take his glasses off later tonight and let me have my way. WITH THE CAMERA. God.)

He just needs to tighten up his manscaping skills. He’s already got the “chasing around a spoiled, hyper, stubborn broad” part down to a science, and that’s pretty much 85% of being Bo Brady right there. I’m obsessed with this notion now, of modeling my blue collar boy-toy into something bigger and better, soap opera-caliber even. I’ve already Facebooked and tweeted about it, so you know it’s reached full-blown infatuation level.

I was still cracking up about it today, and felt a strong urge to YouTube that classic episode where Bo kidnaps Hope from the church on her wedding day to LARRY WELCH. (I’m sad that I remember this, considering I was four when it happened.)  I was watching it on my phone right before I took Chooch to school this morning and was laughing so hard, picturing Henry stealing a cop’s motorcycle (Henry LOVES COPS), that I had to frantically wipe away tears. Chooch of course was like, “What the fuck are you watching? That looks really dumb.” As does anything without cursing and nudity.

Now I’m really inspired to have someone propose to me just so I can see if that will dupe Henry into crashing the wedding and marrying me. Because god knows, bearing his child sure hasn’t.

Jessy just put this picture on Facebook and I couldn’t stop laughing. It was one of the myriad of times one of us four adults had managed to piss Chooch right the fuck off.

Actually, I think Jessy is the only
one who stayed on his good side. She needs to share her secret. Apparently, I did something really terrible. I probably ate a chip that Chooch was looking at for himself, took one too many breaths
in a minute, adjusted my bra strap. Who the hell knows what sets that kid off anymore. But I am waiting for the day he starts incinerating shit with his mind.

I also love how all the boys are wearing navy blue, like they planned it, and how Henry is standing back there laughing and silently willing Chooch to plant a hatchet between my eyes.

It’s scary being yelled at by Chooch.

I try and act like it’s no biggie, like my heart is swoll with courage, but really I’m just trying not to poop my pants.

Probably the only thing Henry enjoys more than receiving a swift punch to the guts/knee in the nuts combo when I get into bed every night is being forced to stay up for a half an hour and listen to me rattle on about my new love.

“You’ll never guess what happened tonight!” I gasped as I climbed over a blanketed mound of Henry and kicked my legs under the covers.

I paused for a second or two, waiting for enthusiastic curiosity to gush from his mouth. I prodded him in the tailbone to gain back his attention.

“I talked to my crush!” I squealed into his sleep-veiled face. He murmured unintelligible syllables which I took to mean, “Oh, what an exciting development. I am grasping my penis, like a baseball bat, in a fit of impassioned anticipation. Please recap the entire conversation, preferably on a stage and in costume!”

And so I turned over on my side and spilled forth my secrets.

“OK so I was walking out of the building because it was the end of my shift and I was leaving, right? And he was standing outside and so I was like Ohmigod should I say it? and I did! I said ‘Bye!’ in that really sweet baby voice I use on people who don’t know the real me, or maybe I said ‘See ya,’ I don’t really know now but whatever I said I’m sure it was fucking brilliant and seductive and then you know what he said back? Oh my god, he said ‘Hey, have a nice night, now’–” And here I paused briefly to shake Henry with my quivering hand so he could understand how profound this exchange truly was. “–like he was struggling to hold himself back from ravishing me right then and there and then I said ‘You too, hehe.’ Isn’t that fucking incredible?”

“Who are you talking about?” Henry moaned into his pillow.

“The security guard at work, you idiot!” I mean, I don’t expect a lot from this relationship, but at least have the decency to keep my crushes in check. “I think his name is Chris,” I cooed, reverting back to my puppy-love intonation. And Henry deemed this a good time to get up and leave for work.

Earlier that night, thanks to Tina’s primal need for gossip (I always get this visual of Tina slurping the gossip out of coworkers’ mouths, like an oyster from a shell. I hope you will now, too!), I learned that the old security guard had been fired for, in Tina’s exact words, “doing the illegal.” I took this for a good opportunity to engage Eleanore in friendly banter regarding the whole situation because she also is a carrier for the Talksalot gene.

Leaning back in my chair, I reached my arms into a stretch and asked, “Oh, so is that why there’s that new guard out there now?”

“Yeah, babe. I guess so.” Eleanore seemed more primed for discussing the aforementioned illegalities, but I forged ahead anyway, hoping that my interest in the new, drama-free guard wasn’t raising suspicions.

“What’s his name, I wonder?” I mused, making sure to sound like I didn’t care too much, though my ears perked at the slight jump in octave near the end of my question. I’m no stranger to moments of out-of-control crush-induced mania, after all.

“I don’t know, sweetie. I think his name is Chris. But don’t quote me!” I found myself breaking into a smile and slowly mouthing his name to my computer monitor. Visions of Christmas morning gyrated through my mind: his stocking emblazoned with a silver glittered “C” hanging joyfully from the fire place mantle, while I poured coffee into his C-monogrammed mug with one hand while adjusting my “I ♥ Chris” pendant with the other.

Eleanore leaned back in her chair and peeked around the divider. “Why don’t you just ask him when you see him?” she suggested.

I nodded and said I would do that, tousling my hair against my cheeks to mask the fast-spreading blush. Then it became giggle-suppressing time.

During one of our breaks outside, Tina and Eleanore were still buzzing about the security guard soap opera. Tina went on to lambaste the new guard by complaining that when she left early the night before, he wasn’t even inside the guard station.

I was furious. I couldn’t have her making such serious accusations about my new boyfriend like that. So when I noticed a slight movement in the guard station across the parking lot, I interrupted the conversation by over-zealously shouting, “He’s in there!

The new guard! I just saw him move!” Tina, Joe, and Eleanore quieted down and stared at my finger, wildly pointing across the lot. I lowered my arm and, toning down the TRL-esque shrillness in my voice, concluded by saying, “See, he’s doing his job. That’s all.”

And they resumed their boring discourse in property taxes and cost of living. Bo-hor-ing.

I can’t really tell you why I’m already penning the story of our eternal love. It’s not that his hands are clad in erotic security-strength gloves, because they aren’t (although could you imagine? Ho boy!). It’s not because he coifs his mane in the style of Robert Smith and recites idyllic sonnets about the way the sunlight vaults off my golden locks the same way my boobs bounce when I chase after the ball in a sweaty match of kickball. Because he doesn’t do that either. Christina does, though.

Look, it’s not even fueled by superficial desires to put my hands all over his security-badged chest, because to be honest, I haven’t been close enough to see how attractive he really is. My eyes are bad!

I think it’s because he’s black. I’ve been listening to a lot of Bone Thugs n Harmony lately.

[Ed.Note: Found this when doing some Tina-related digging on my old LiveJournal!]

Sorry, Googlers – I don’t actually have any photographical evidence of Jonny Craig’s genitalia here at Oh Honestly, Erin, but thanks for keeping what I wrote about him last year the most-viewed post on my blog! Over 80 views just in the last 24-hours  (1,167 all-time), which is a lot when you’re as unpopular in the blogosphere as I am.

And of course there’s got to be a “flopping boobs” up in there, too, for good measure.

Call me a hypocrite, but my favorite part of traveling through Europe as a kid was all the cathedrals and churches I got to poke around in along the way, from Westminster Abbey to the Cathedral of Notre Dame to the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, where I witnessed an enraged monk flinging a thick chain against a stone wall and had nightmares about it for weeks. It’s not the religious aspect for me, but more the architecture and art. Old religious art scares the shit out of me, which only makes me want it more. It’s why I have a small (but growing!) collection of it in my bathroom. Nothing will top that $2 mosaic of the Last Supper made from aquarium rocks, though.

The Vatican of course always had the greatest impact on me. Even just waiting to get inside is scary. It’s been awhile since I’ve been there – over a decade – so I’m not sure if the rules are as stringent, but from what I remember, shorts had to be at least knee-length if you wanted any chance at all of eking past the Swiss guards. (I took a picture of them once and I thought my family was going to have a heart attack. “DO NOT TAKE THEIR PICTURE! DO NOT EVEN MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH THEM! IN FACT, JUST STOP BREATHING!”) And don’t even think about slipping inside the Vatican with exposed shoulders. I always brought a windbreaker with me on days where any sort of religious facility was going to be toured, just to be safe.

Plus, it’s as icy as Herod’s heart in those fuckers.

Once inside the Vatican, I would always cry. Always. The history alone is enough to make you catch your breath, but then you look up at the Sistine Chapel and it’s the most realest Shut the Fuck Up moment you might ever experience in your life. Just knowing that one man accomplished that expansive work of art, it’s just, I can’t even. And to stand below it, to see it with your own eyes? Even if art isn’t your thing, I can’t imagine anyone looking at that and not feeling something. Even if that something is just a slight sense a vertigo.

My most vivid memory though has nothing to do with St. Peter’s Basilica or Bernini’s baldacchino (I will have someone make me my own baldacchino before I die, count on that), but of an Asian tourist kneeling down on the ground to take a photo and promptly being converged upon by guards and escorted out without so much as a warning. Let that be a lesson to all you Asians and kneeling aficionados!

I am not a spoiled little rich girl anymore, and God only knows (haha, see what I did there?) when or if I’ll ever make it back over there. So when I heard that Vatican Splendors was rolling into the Heinz History Center, I sent out a frantic tweet to find someone who would be down for ogling priceless religical relics; Kara immediately replied. (Kara is my go-to-girl for looking at things and eating weird food.) This was in September.

Two weeks ago, I was in the car with Henry and Chooch when I saw that the billboard for Vatican Splendors now had a warning of FINAL DAYS! slapped across it. Slight panic set in. “Oh shit,” I said to no one who cared. “I forgot that for a split second I was interested in that!” Kara and I quickly solidified plans after that; great marketing plan – the sense of threat always makes me less ambivalent when it comes to plan-making.

It was packed when we lined up for the tour last Friday. Groups are sent through every 30 minutes, and the groups themselves didn’t seem too overwhelming, but that wasn’t accounting for all the die hards in earlier groups who would pause for eternity in front of an ancient mold of a man’s head and ask their companion, “Now how do they know this was a man’s head?” at which point their pretentiously-scarved scholar friend will swan dive into a dissertation causing the rest of the groups to pile up and shuffle impatiently in place behind them because we too want to see this half-destroyed chunk of cranium-shaped stone and hey bitch, just go home and GOOGLE THAT SHIT.

Inside the exhibition, it was quite literally a Red Sea of fanny-packs, velour track suits on liver-spotted bodies, dentured smiles framed with coral lipstick. This one old broad kept running into me, so I started “accidentally” elbowing her, smashing my purse against her broad backside, purposely planting my feet a few seconds longer in front of a particular reliquary that has her craning her Aqua-Netted coif over my shoulder and shaking her blood pressure pills, that’s how badly she can’t wait for it to be her turn.

I quickly remembered that I don’t get along well with other people who want to look at Jesus art.

“There are so many people here I hate,” I whispered to Kara, and she gave me a knowing nod. She carried her billion-pound slumbering baby through the whole exhibit, so I think she was probably more focused on hating her own life at that point.

While the demographic was mostly in the 65 – Holy Ghost range, there were a few kids there as well. One guy behind me was quietly observing a painting with his son, who was probably five or six, and asked him, “What do you think is going on in this picture?” at which point they had a quiet, intellectual dialogue. It gave me pause. I tried to imagine Chooch there with me, but all I could hear ricocheting around my head was: MOMMY I CAN SEE THAT ANGEL BROAD’S BOOBS! WHO’S THAT DEAD BASTARD? WHY IS DEAD JESUS LOOKING AT HIS MOM’S BOOBS??? DOES JESUS HAVE A WEENER? AW, CHRIST.

This is why I leave my child at home with his uncultured father.

At one point, a pernicious tickle cropped up in my throat. I knew this tickle well, we go way back. He likes to present himself anytime I’m in a situation where I’m in a crowd of people, looking at things, and trying to be respectful. He was at my child’s Baptism. He was at the Salem Witch Museum during a presentation where everyone was asked to STFU, and there I was, trying to smother myself in Henry’s side to silence my uncontrollable coughing.

“Do you think I’ll get yelled at if I sneak a sip of my water?” I whispered to Kara, who probably couldn’t have cared less about my tickling throat situation, considering her arms were about to atrophy under the weight of her slumbering baby. There were History Center employees ducked into shadowy doorways and corners all throughout the place, but I chanced it. I was fine after that, but unfortunately I didn’t put the cap on all the way so water slowly spilled out onto the contents of my purse the whole time I pretended to read the plaques next to things like Very Important Deeds Behind Glass. I wouldn’t discover this until I was on my way home, of course. Good thing I didn’t have my Mogwai smuggled in there, am I right?

Of course, there was no photography of any kind allowed, which is a shame, because I was mostly interested in taking photos of all the people I couldn’t stand.

Like an old lady and her even older mom, who I think was handicapped, actually I think they both were. They were behind me for awhile, and the daughter had some gilded nugget of information to add to every artifact. Like the Pieta.

“They say the replica is so similar to the real one, that it’s hard to tell the difference!” she cooed to her mom, who muttered an “mmm” in response. Then they dipped out of line and flitted off yonder. “But I was learning so much from them!” I whined to Kara, whose baby-cradling biceps had inflated to the size of dwarves by that point and it’s a good thing they weren’t that big on the way in because she probably would have been charged admission for them. You know how the Church is.

There were definitely a few moments where I got all choked up, not because I was having some crazy religious awakening, but just being face-to-face with so many pieces of history. Even looking at one of Michaelangelo’s tools encased in glass, I got a little awe-struck. I don’t necessarily believe in God and all that, but I do believe in art, and the existence of Michaelangelo, Bernini, Botticelli, Guercino. (His Christ with Crown of Thorns was there and I seriously almost lost it; that painting is so goddamn scary to me, I can’t even. My favorite part was when two teenage girls pushed their way through the crowd and one of them yelled, “Hey! That’s that really famous painting!” They looked at it for .005 seconds from about 10 feet away, then took off.)

So, you know, don’t think it’s so weird that I bumped elbows with Vatican fuckers for an afternoon.

P1010056, originally uploaded by appledale.

I will forever miss working with Tina, her mysterious oozing facial gashes, her need to remind the world that she knows it all, and – most importantly – her man-stance. According to another ex-co-worker, she has apparently moved back to Wyoming, a state whose existence I always forget. Wyoming is SO LUCKY.

And I’m sure (all) you long-time blog reader(s) really miss reading about her. (Yeah right!) No one at my current job comes close to emulating her crudeness, her need to remind us all she was IN THE SERVICE, and – most importantly – her femmullet. I’m pretty sure this is a very good thing, though.

I have a real post on the way. I have been sick and staring at the NHL Network with glazed-over eyes all morning while Chooch is in school and I should be getting real stuff done. NOT SO MUCH.

Remember when color bars were all the rage? Me neither. But apparently they once were, at least on LiveJournal. I found one that I made when Henry was sick.

Sick Henry is Yuck

I started doing that work-at-home data entry bullshit that I was doing briefly last winter, after receiving an email out of the blue asking if I’m available for more work. I said yes because we’re going to the beach next summer so I thought maybe I could make some extra cash to help fund that, or at the very least pay for the quotation marks I’m getting tattooed on my fingers this month.

Five minutes after I logged in, I remembered just how boring 10-key is and started looking at things on the Internet.

Like color bars.

And now you’re caught up with my life.

OMG PRETTY RAINBOW SPARKLES! I might seriously need to be tossed in an asylum when/if (good chance she’s immortal) Marcy perishes.

This was Chooch, shortly after the ball dropped and he was encouraged for once to make noise.

We rang in the New Year at Jessy’s house with an array of high-caloric party food, wine slushies and a Mario Kart marathon on Wii which made me laugh to the point of tears so you know I had to have been drunk because typically watching other people play video games is not amusing for me. It was last night!

I’m not going to do some big lofty recap of 2010, but it was a pretty decent year.

Sure, it had its trying moments but what’s life without challenges and petty drama, right?

From April on, everything slowly started to fall into place.

I got a reprieve from the heavens in the form of a temporary position at a downtown law firm, which is now a permanent position, and have really come to appreciate it there. It’s nice not anticipating those eviction notices anymore.

Sometimes I even order more than water with my porridge now BECAUSE I CAN.

But best of all, I reconnected with some old friends and made a couple new ones too. If 2011 features even half of a continuation to that theme, I think I’ll be OK.

Hope everyone had a safe and happy new year’s eve and is planning on watching the Winter Classic tonight (HINT HINT)! Go Pens!