How can I not like a band from Canberra, Australia? It’s where I met the Cure, after all.

Chooch and I have had at least 87 dance parties to this song over the last three days.

Today, we were jumping/dancing to this (and Dance Gavin Dance, of course) and simultaneously caused each other to have pee drops. Nothing says GREAT PARTY than having to change your underwear.

It is definitely spring time, that’s for sure.

Go get stoked on this song.

Chooch and I were fucking around outside before I went to work. I love this picture so much.

When Jeannie got out of the car that Sunday afternoon two weeks ago, she asked me how I was doing. I told her the truth instead of abiding by my Pappap’s rule of “it’s easier to just say ‘fine!'” and admitted to her that I was hungover, and possibly slightly concerned I might puke on her shoes.

I had already canceled plans once with her when I was sick a few weeks ago, and no way was I doing that twice! I canceled twice on Sandy for after-work drinks and now she thinks I hate her/am allergic to her/am a horrible liar.

I’m going to have a reputation soon.

Jeannie and I went to one of my favorite places, the Mattress Factory, where we pretended to understand the things we were seeing. Jeannie taught me that sometimes it helps to read the informative plaques next to each art installation.

Afterward, we walked through a house for sale down the street which had obnoxiously shallow closets. I originally wanted Jeannie to buy the house, because it was old and weird, but then I worried about where she would hide if a killer was after her, a la Michael Myers.

She said she liked how that was the first place my mind went, but that’s just my “normal.” After awhile, she probably wouldn’t like it so much. I know Henry sure doesn’t.

We ended the day with coffee at Crazy Mocha, where I had to pee so bad even though there were at least 87 bathrooms I could have patronized at the Mattress Factory, and then I used the last of the toilet paper, wherein I had an existential crisis over whether to tell an employee.

I ended up not telling an employee about the toilet paper. But at least I didn’t puke on Jeannie’s shoes.

The rest of my day was pretty horrible, so I was thankful for this one bright spot.

It was a nice day yesterday so when Chooch came home from school, I ushered him right back outside so we could take some pictures.

I like to try and post up-to-date photos of him on here whenever I can, on the off-chance that my estranged mother might decide to swing by the blog to get a refresher on what her grandson looks like.

Like that would ever happen.

He woke up two Saturdays ago with the most awesome (Biblical sense) bedhair I’ve ever seen. If Christofer Drew (Never Shout Never) had seen it, he probably would have tried to interrogate Chooch on the exact slumbering position which gained him such a scene rat-nest. It served as an intense impetus to get me to escort him to the nearest salon.

I kind of hate what the lady did to him, but I guess it’s better than it was. His sideburns were practically fluttering wings before BoRics intervened.

These were the only photos I got out of him before he started doing the pee-jig and we had to race to the house, at which point it took me approximately 87 minutes to help him finagle his jeans off because he was wearing a belt, the mechanisms of which I just can’t for the life of me comprehend and Henry was at work. Life is so hard when Henry isn’t around to bail me out.

Henry and I will often find ourselves up late on weekends, flipping through music channels, but I almost always have him stop on VH1 Soul to pacify my inner yo-girl. For as much screamo, hardcore, post-hardcore, goth, emo, indie rock, etc. etc. I listen to, my roots actually lie in r&b. I am always down for a good motown joint; some old school Anita Baker; or my 1990’s favorite, El DeBarge. My favorite r&b singer of the last decade is hands down Trey Songz. When I first heard “Can’t Help But Wait” in 2007, I was pretty much like, “El DeBarge who?” That song accompanied me on many cemetery suicide-jogs, prompting me to wail to Henry, “WHY DON’T YOU EVER CALL ME A STAR?!!?”

Not to mention Trey Songz is fucking hot. Every time I see his video for “Can’t Be Friends,” I will literally collapse onto Henry and squeal, “HE IS SO PRETTY I CAN’T STAND IT.” (Trey, not Henry.) The song is unbearably sad to me, like barbed wire strangulating my already-broken heart, but I must have watched this video 87,878,787 times over the last few months, because HE IS SO PRETTY I CAN’T STAND IT.

I’ve listened to this song over and over. One time, I left it on repeat almost all day (it was actually on a torturous playlist with a whole whopping two other love songs) until Henry snapped and turned it off. (I feel like this happened on Thanksgiving Day when he was already stressed-out in the kitchen.) I’ve always been excellent at playing out songs. There was one New Year’s Eve in high school when I listened to the same Howard Hewett single on repeat, crying over some dumb boy, and I really thought my friend Christy was never going to talk to me again, she was so fucking annoyed.

(Fifteen years later, and I’m still Queen of Overkill. In fact, the same Dance Gavin Dance album has been perpetually spinning in my bedroom for a week now. Henry gets to be lulled to sleep every night by Jonny Craig’s sex-lungs and Jon Mess’s redrum screaming. LUCKY HENRY AMIRITE?)

“Can’t Be Friends” has that same Howard Hewett-sadomasochistic effect on me.

Oh, the things I could say about this song.

Yesterday was a pretty nice day, so I cajoled Henry into going for a walk in the cemetery with me and Chooch. He was pretty equivocal about it at first, because even something as normal-sounding as a “walk” or “stroll” can lead to certain headaches, arguments and popo run-ins when I’m involved.

Nothing like a nice Jamaican Lager in the boneyard.

A view through Henry’s new glasses. At first they made him look like BTK, but they’ve grown on me. He’s at least halfway to aging scene king now.

I forgot about how INTO NATURE Henry can be. Within two minutes, he had pointed out deer, turkey and squirrels before turning his attention skyward in search of birds.

“LOOK, THERE IS A WOODPECKER, OMG!” he cried desperately at one point, and I had about ten year’s worth of cemetery-walk flash backs, most notably the unlimited minutes he spent schooling me about moss in ’04. Get a fucking life with your nature shit.

Inspecting a dumping ground for what I embarrassingly mistook for rocks but were really STONES (rookie mistake, really), Henry shook his head in disbelief and said to no one in particular, “I can’t believe they’d just dump those stones there. Those are EXPENSIVE stones. THEY ARE CUT STONE AND MARBLE!”

That is the sort of guy I’m dating, the one who knows the difference between a mere skipping pebble and EXPENSIVE STONES, yet it gets us nowhere.

Imagine your town molester, taking a break from copping feels to amble slowly through the park, hands clasped behind his back and smiling sweetly to himself while his unmarked white van idles sinisterly in front of the middle school down the street.

There, now you know what Outdoors Henry look like!

Henry must have been getting under Chooch’s skin as well, because I overheard him quietly cantillating at one point, “Zombies/Come kill my dad/He’s annoying me.”

My favorite place in the whole wide world.

After I broke up with my boyfriend for Henry in 2001, one of the last things he said to me was, “Have fun drinking IC Light and listening to country music.

“

I’m assuming he was trying to insinuate that Henry is white trash, his only basis being that Henry is fourteen years older than me.

In these last ten years, I have not once brought an IC Light up to my lips (I’m a wino), and last I checked, there are no country bands playing at Warped Tour.

Nice try.

[It is not the opinion of this blog’s writer that the enjoyment of either of these things, separate or in tandem, makes the person partaking in such “white trash.”]

Easter’s pretty lame for adults. I try to keep some of the child-like wonder alive by dyeing eggs, but that shit gets old after dunking one hard-boiled chick into a cup of colored vinegar. Andrea from My Pretty Zombie must feel the same way because she created a limited edition Easter eye shadow set for us child-like grown-ups to still feel some Resurrectionary joy.

This picture was taken from MPZ’s Etsy, credit goes to Andrea.

Deviled Egg with a little Rabbit’s Foot on top, Basketcase and Dye! Dye! as liner. Vacant stare  not included.

I wish these pictures showed the awesome red glitter in Deviled Egg, but I am not skilled in cosmetic photography. But seriously, go grab one of these sets — she only made about 20 of them and it’s totally worth it. I made sure I was the first one to get one because I’m a whore for MPZ.

And while I’m on the Easter kick, I think that the art of Easter card-sending is dead. I haven’t received an Easter card since I was a good Catholic kid anticipating a new My Little Pony in my goddamn Easter basket. My mom used to intercept my Easter cards and steal the money from them.

Even still, I sort of miss getting Easter cards. Someone you know might feel the same way, so why not surprise their grown-up, basket-less self this Easter by sending them this card.

This card features the same zombie from my other cards, as drawn by Chooch, and I added some digital embellishments to give him a Jesus bent.

Comes with an envelope, because that’s what Jesus would do. You can pick one up over at Non Compos Cards, and use the coupon code “jejune” for free shipping.

I’m taking a zombie self-defense class on Palm Sunday. Totally feeling Easter this year. Might even buy a Laura Ashley.

It wasn’t until we were on the way to the roller rink that I noticed the four long whiskers protruding from Henry’s chin like the acicular spines of a cactus. I felt it was my duty as his girlfriend to not only point this out to him, but to belittle and ridicule him as well. (I was already a bit bristled that he shaved in the first place. I hate the fresh-faced molester look he achieves from shaving his untamed brush.)

“If I ever did something like that to you,” Henry fired back. He didn’t need to finish that statement. We both know what I’d do.

I think on a normal night, he’d have shrugged it off. But on this night, some of my friends from work were coming out to Soul Skate, so he made a panic-stop at a 7-11 and bought a pair of clippers.

***

I was nervous when we arrived at the rink, because there weren’t many people there. Not that there ever really is, but I was worried that my friends would get there and feel that I had over-hyped Adult Skate with the Steel City Rollers. (Which I do over-hype it, but that’s just my nature to develop unhealthy obsessions and then blow it out of proportion like a bad boob job.) I was also still under the umbrella of that plague that pretty much rendered me useless for two weeks in March. By the night of Soul Skate, though, the pressure had moved out of my sinuses and into my tooth. It was fantastic and didn’t make me feel dizzy or on the precipice of tears at all. [See: sarcasm.]

Not being 100% really showed in my skating abilities. My legs were wobbly and a few times felt as though they might give out.

“Now my friends are going to think I was lying about how dream-like I am on wheels!” I whined to Henry, even though I was lying to them about how dream-like I am on wheels.

Kristen got here first and brought two of her friends with her. She introduced me to them by saying, “This is Erin, she’s the one who organized this whole thing!” as we stood right next to some of the Steel City Rollers. I very quickly clarified that I was the one who sent out the Facebook invite in order to recruit new soul skaters. That’s all I need is for the Rollers to think some prissy honky cracker is trying to usurp their territory! I panicked about it for a few minutes, and Henry was like, “I don’t think they would care.” But I know if someone tried to take credit for something I organized, I would rip off their head with my bare heads and then take it outside and curb-stomp it. This is also what I would do to anyone Henry might be stupid enough to cheat on me with.

By the time Sandy arrived, I had skated a few laps already and my sickness had left my face feeling like a glazed ham. I tried to play it off like it was the sweat from An Athlete and attempted to talk to her off-rink for a few minutes, but Roller DJ kept playing all my jams so I’d have no choice but to skate off into the horizon.

“You invite your friends here and then don’t even talk to them?!” Henry chastised as we pretended to be a skating couple in love.

“They didn’t come here to talk to me!” I yelled over the bumpin’ soul. “They came here to see this,” I said, pointing to my quads and almost falling. “And also to see Roller DJ.” It’s always good to end a statement with honesty. This is what I’m teaching in my first off-college course which is being held in my attic next month. The class is called How to Write on the Internet While Avoiding Death Threats.

Pretending to be in Love. Henry ruined this picture. But then he bought me an official Steel City Rollers’ Spring Bling t-shirt so I forgave him for that and his horrible shave-job.

I noticed that Kristen, Sandy, and Kristen’s friends had vanished, but I found them hanging out in the snack room.

“Oh, you’re going to talk to us now!” Sandy sneered, at which point I had to explain the hold that the roller rink has over my motor skills. I can’t just break away to go chat it up whenever I want! I have to wait until the song is over, at which point I will then wait to see what Roller DJ has queued up and only then can it be determined if I can leave that beautiful wood floor. (I also darted off the rink a few times in order to suck Orajel straight from the tube.)

Henry and his molester-mask sat by themselves. He’s intimidated of Sandy, I think, because she harangues him from afar. He attempted to “get revenge” by pointing and laughing at her as she stumble-skated around the rink, when meanwhile she wasn’t even doing a bad job. Whatever makes you feel better, Henry. Why don’t you go treat yourself to a white unmarked van.

Wendy was the last to arrive. “Was I supposed to pay?” she asked. She apparently just walked right in and got away with it because she’s Wendy and can pull shit like that off. If I had tried a stunt like that, I’d probably still be detained with a potato sack over my swollen face in some abandoned factory on Neville Island.

All three of them were skating n00bs, so I probably did look like a dream-on-wheels to them. I had planned on making fun of their Frankenstein skating-strides, but I want them to come back so maybe I shouldn’t do that. They seemed to get joy from watching the Rollers, though, so some of my event organizing insecurities subsided.

Sandy, Wendy, me and post-spill Kristen

Roller DJ sought me out and came over for a chat. Kristen thought it would be adorable to take my picture with him, which he happily (and me? grudgingly) obliged. It took Kristen an entire late shift to get her phone ready for picture time, which gave me infinite minutes to stand around awkwardly while Sandy laughed at me from behind Roller DJ’s back.

Damn, I love me some Roller DJ, even though he never played my Bone Thugs n Harmony joint that one night. I’m going to ask one of the Rollers to request a song for me next time (OMG this Saturday!). I want Casserine’s magnum opus “Why Not Take All of Me.” In fact, I’m going to illegally download that shit right now. I need to feel all 1996 again.

Because I haven’t been feeling enough like a sixteen-year-old this week.

There was only one person I hated that night. Some older broad wearing a mauve sweater straight from grandma’s closet, feet stuffed in her own pair of white leather skates. She had the nerve to scream OUTSIDE! to me at one point when I was nowhere even close to being in her way as she skated grumpily in between me and the wall. I got all fired up about this, because when the Rollers do this, they cheer happily to alert you of their approaching presence. I wanted to scream it back to her later in the night, but of course I was going to add “YOU DUMB BITCH!” to it. Henry quickly snuffed out this plan.

I saw her skating with some super old bitch later in the night, presumably her mom. They had their arms around each other like they were skating through Central Park in 1926.

“Do you think that’s her mom?” Kristen asked.

“Has to be,” I spat. “Because no way does she have any friends.” SHE IS ON MY LIST.

Sandy and Kristen left around 9:30. Wendy, Henry and I spent the last half hour in the snack room, drinking Orange Crush and essentially talking shit on Sandy and Kristen. We even made hand puppets in their likeness to make the back-stabbing into a real show.

I felt so fraudulent sitting out the last 30 minutes, but the muscles in my legs were the consistency of after-birth at that point, considering it was the most exertion they’d experienced in the two weeks I had been ill. By the time the night was over, I felt even worse, but Soul Skate was worth it.

Hopefully my work friends understand that the only reason I don’t twirl and do splits is because I like to keep it real. Also, because I only know how to skate really fast, like I’m being chased by naked androgynous beings bearing flaming strap-ons.

GO DANGEROUS DARYLL, GO!

If I ever can pull myself out of this emotional concentration camp I’ve thrown myself in, I will be writing about last week’s Soul Skate. This will hopefully happen later today.

But until then, I will just be floating around the house listlessly, with imaginary slit-wrists thanks to Jonny Craig. Fuck you, Jonny Craig.

(I know, this shit is annoying.

Now try being Henry and having to live with it. The 2:28 mark made me collapse into his arms yesterday and he was like, “WTF is wrong with you, sixteen-year-old?” and I was wailing, “IT IS STABBING ME IN THE HEART OW OW OW!

” Sometimes it’s easier to listen to the same song over and over rather than deal with reality, I guess.

)

Since the middle of March, I had been going through life incorrectly informed on the date of Easter. This is, of course, Henry’s fault, who told me, “Oh, it’s April 4th” when I asked him.

You’ll note that April 4th is not even a Sunday. That slight in information apparently didn’t raise any suspicions in me. Not even when I sent out Facebook invitations for an Easter egg dyeing party and scheduled it for Saturday, April 2nd, i.e. “the day before Easter.”

Meanwhile, I was looking at the calendar for Chooch’s school and noted that Sarris Easter candy pick-up is April 7th. I freaked out. How was I going to tell the people who ordered candy from Chooch that it wasn’t going to be here in time for Easter basket grass-strangulation? This was appalling to me and made me hate Chooch’s school even more.

And when one of my old friends from school suggested getting our kids together “two Sundays from now,” I was like, “I guess this dum-dum doesn’t know that’s Easter.”

It was sometime last week when I found out Easter is actually the 24th. And none of my friends even questioned why I wanted to dye eggs so early. They’re so sweet. (And also probably know not to question my motives.)

I appreciated that Kara put so much effort into it. She was the only one who used the piece of shit egg-stamping kit I threw in the cart when Henry said, “Don’t get that, it looks stupid.” Well guess what, Henry, for the third time in 10 years you were right. It’s still all your fault, though. And then he had to prepare all the dye, of course, and was beyond irritated that Chooch and I had previously opened some of the kits and mixed things all up. For the third time in my life, I thought Henry was going to walk out on us, send his mom over later to pick up his belongings.

No one could remember who did the pretty blue and pink spotted egg so I quickly took credit. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure I only dyed two eggs before growing bored: the first one I lost, and the second one of course had a weener drawn on it, which didn’t turn out well but Gina promised she knew what it was.

Henry’s son Robbie stopped by with his girlfriend Karen. They wouldn’t dye any eggs, preferring instead to spectate. Then they put their pretenses aside and retreated to the other room to watch the hockey game and talk to Henry. (Who chooses talking to Henry over dyeing eggs? Over anything?)

The good thing about my friends is that when Henry leaves the room, I don’t have to seamlessly sink into parenting mode, because my friends are there to do that for me. I do not have the time to make sure my kid isn’t swigging from dye cups. I’m not even sure Janna dyed any of her own eggs because she was too busy helping Chooch with glitter and sequins and making sure he didn’t die of negligence.

And I appreciated that when Chooch mistakenly plopped an egg in Gina’s cup of wine, on which I painstakingly went through the motions of Sharpie’ing her name and the words NOT EGG DYE which might not be very beneficial to four-year-old non-readers, she was like, “No, it’s cool” and just drank around it.

She must have really enjoyed this new way to quaff wine because she spent the rest of the evening watching Chooch play some stupid Pokemon game on Wii, so that means they’re BFFs now. In Chooch’s book, anyway.

This might have been one of my most poorly-planned parties ever. I’ll start planning next year’s tomorrow.

I woke up feeling like complete shit the next morning. I mean, a hangover is the natural end result of a night of Easter egg-dyeing, right?

We were talking about George Benson the other day, Henry and I. Well, mostly just I was. I think I was making a painfully stretched comparison between a Dance Gavin Dance song and George Benson, and I’m sure it only made sense to my ear drums, as evidenced by the aghast look on Henry’s scruffy face.

“Seriously, this song could have been in Short Circuit 2,” I cried, pleading my case. And then, “George Benson always make me think of Joe (our ex-boss from the early 00’s).”

Henry snorted. Joe is a sore subject ’round these parts.

“I remember when he found out about us,” I said.

“He came into my office, shut the door and said, ‘Let’s have a little talk.’ I was sure I was getting fired.”

Henry and I did pretty good for awhile in the beginning, keeping our relationship as clandestine at work as a bi-racial love affair in the ’50s. Of course, I’d toe the line by making out with him in the break room. He’d always get so nervous and try unsuccessfully to push me away, but I’m too much of a harlot to get shooed away like some dung-caked horsefly.

I will never forget this one fateful night in October of 2001, Henry and I were on our way to a haunted house. At a red light, I sat in the passenger seat, holding Henry’s hand across the console, when I casually looked out the window. I made eye contact with the driver of the car next to us, and of course it would happen to be a co-worker, Jim.

Motherfucking Jim Landis.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise and I flung Henry’s hand far away from me like it was the heroin-packed rectum of a corpse and a wagonful of DEA had sidled up next to me.

The light turned green and we sped away.

That Monday, I had to pull Jim aside and beg him not to tell. And especially since he was one of Joe’s Golden Boys, I was panicked and paranoid.

Joe eventually found out, albeit months later, which was where the absurd, but kind of cute I guess, Concerned Father chat stemmed from. It was the whole, “This man is much older than you and I don’t want to see you get hurt” spiel, which I guess I should have considered more seriously, on second thought. BECAUSE LOOK AT ME NOW.

“You know, our old landlord gave me the same talk, sat me right down in his office when I went up there and told him you were moving in with me,” I told Henry, remembering it with a certain fondness because that guy is dead now and he was such a great land lord. “I guess he wanted to make sure I had thought it through.”

“I wish someone would have had that talk with me,” Henry mumbled.