Barb and I found out recently that our co-worker Bob is dating some broad from Morocco, but we’re not supposed to know that Bob is dating some broad from Morocco which means we can’t outright ask him about it because then he’ll know we know when we’re not supposed to know.

So we have been thinking of ways to bring it up in conversation, when I realized, “Holy fuck! Let’s just talk about my Moroccan souvenir bracelet that I just got from the flea market!”

And that is just what we attempted to do earlier this evening, except that Bob wasn’t paying attention when Barb loudly exclaimed, “OH WOW IS THAT A PRETTY BRACELET WHAT IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE?” to which I giddily replied, “WHY IT IS A MOROCCAN SOUVENIR BRACELET. FROM MOROCCO.” And then I had to turn and face the wall to hide the fact that I was laughing.

Nothing. Not even a slight twitch indicating that he heard us.

But because I hatch plans like Michelle Duggar hatches flesh-suits for her Biblical name collection, I wasn’t deterred. One of the reasons I was at Barb’s desk in the first place was because I had brought an unmarked apple to work with me. The sticker must had fallen off en route.

Side Note: I am keeping a log of all the different apples I eat because that is what obsessed people do, and probably also people who murder their mother and use the corpse as a body pillow. Henry has been trying to purchase different hybrids of apples each time he goes food shopping; however, I had already eaten one of each of this last batch. So I knew that the apple in my hand was one of probably five, and not knowing wasn’t really going to affect my “research” considering I had already sampled one of its kind. Different apples really do taste different! I never would have imagined.

I thrust my right apple-clutching fist near Bob’s face and said, “Do you know what kind of apple this is?

” while creating subtle wrist quakes paramount for a good bracelet-jangle.

A thing you should know about Bob: he knows pretty much everything. So my inquiry was not dismissed, yet embraced by a do-or-die mission to prove to me that he knows some shit about a goddamn apple.

He considered this thoughtfully, turned the apple in his palm, held it up the light and began spouting off some nonsense about its shine. Of course Bob would be some sort of apple dork.

“I really want to say Honeycrisp, but something about it is screaming ‘Gala’ to me. Why don’t you just eat it and find out?”

I laughed at how nonchalant this suggestion was. “I’m just learning about apples, Bob!” I said. “I’m not going to be able to tell.”

Now, I really didn’t give too much of a fuck about this apple other than the fact that it had a hot date with my mouth later that night and we were going to go all the way. But now I felt like I had to pose my quandary upon Nate as well, who sits in front of Bob, to make it seem more realistic.

Nate immediately went for his phone and typed in “What kind of apple is this?” When that produced no results, he resorted the archaic methods of just looking at it. I believe he also guessed Honeycrisp, but I can’t remember for sure.

A few minutes later, I returned to my desk to find Nate, in a thoughtful crouch, gazing intently at my apple. He retreated with slumped shoulders, unable to be the apple hero of the day. I could hear him and Bob intently discussing the apple case behind me. A veritable produce parade of apple varieties were being tossed about in serious tones.

Then Nate came back with his phone, which he held up next to the specimen to compare it to photos of other apples. Bob soon joined him with a KNIFE and I was certain he was going to snatch my apple and pare into it in a manner better reserved for Grizzly Adams. Or that Survivor Man who drinks his own piss.

Barb was just coming back from the kitchen, so she stopped to watch Nate and Bob stroking their chins thoughtfully, knowing that this was all because of Bob not taking the bait when we loudly talked about my Moroccan bracelet. Glenn, who would rather be riding the Wacky Worm, paused to see what the fuss was about.

“Why don’t you just eat it?” he suggested in his “I’m Too Old to Understand All This Hullaballoo” tone. (Note: Henry has this same tone.)

“Because I eat my apple every night at 7pm,” I explained like that was the most natural thing in the world.

“Oh, right. Of course,” he said sarcastically while shaking his head.

Then someone asked me what the big deal was with me and apples and I said, “Oh, because I just learned that I like them.” I was met with no less than three blank stares, so I elaborated that it was mostly because I just learned to cut them.

Bob was incredulous at this point. “You don’t need to cut apples to eat them!” he exclaimed.

“You do when you don’t like to bite into them,” I said. Glenn was giving me one of those Henry Looks so I said, “I have fears, OK?”

“There’s a lot of issues going on in this corner over here,” he said, waving his hands around my desk.

I resented that.

Later on, Barb sent over George, whose family has apple orchards.

“It looks like a Fuji,” he said and looked at me with an ‘Am I Right?’ smirk. At his desk, I heard Nate say, “Ooh, that’s the first time Fuji came up!”

I sat in silence for a few seconds before realizing that George thought this was some type of afternoon work quiz and was looking for his prize.

“Oh, I have no idea what kind it is.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know how you acquired this apple?” he asked slowly, with a hearty dose of skepticism.

“Oh. Some store, I guess. Henry does all that grocery store stuff.”

“You know, I wouldn’t be shocked if that was a Pink Lady,” George said, before walking away. Final answer?

Apple o’clock has come and gone and I have since eaten our little anonymous John Doe. At first I was like, “Oh this is not pleasing.

” But then by the second slice, I was all, “Wait. This is good.” It was crisp, which I actually do not like, and slightly tart with a strangely familiar, sweet aftertaste. My produce palate is about as refined as Flava Flav so that’s really the best I can do. Does that help?

Maybe pictures will. It has to be one of these type:

Gala, Pink Lady, Honeycrisp, Ambrosia, Jazzy (Jazzies?), Cameo. Whatever it was, I want another.

EDIT!! HOLD UP! I got in The car after work and was excitedly telling Henry about the night’s events. Before I even got a few sentences into it, he interrupted and said, “It’s an Ambrosia. Chooch took the sticker off but I made sure I checked first.” Oddly, another co-worker, Aaron, was telling me earlier that he recently ate an Ambrosia and it was the only apple he’s ever disliked. He said it had a soapy bite to it and now suddenly all I can taste in my throat is something akin to goddamn Palmolive. Sonofabitch.

Game over. Everyone loses.

Went to visit my friend Nina today before she returns to work from maternity week. Her little baby Quentin is 7 weeks old and nearly made me want to open a baby factory in my uterus. And Nina looked great; I don’t remember looking so together and clean when Chooch was 7 weeks old. In fact, I think I was still rocking in a corner, moaning incoherently about my incision pain. Child birth was a huge, black TRAUMA on the map of my life.

After I had been there for, oh I don’t know, AN HOUR, I asked, “Can I hold him? I just want to see if I remember how.”

“Of course you can, fool!” she laughed. And then I juggled him awkwardly for a good long minute before passing him back over.

The furnace guy arrived right before I left.

“Are you the furnace guy?” Nina asked as she held open the door for him to pass through.

“Nina! You’re not supposed to ask that! He’s supposed to tell you who he is on his own!” I laughed, knowing full well I would have either done the same thing or ran upstairs and hid under the bed while he continued to knock and then I would obsessively wonder if I remembered to lock the door. Way to give the next Ted Bundy easy access, Nina.

“Hi, I’m the furnace guy,” the supposed furnace guy dead-panned, already in the house at this point. He didn’t look as creepy as that furnace fucker who comes to my house, so I felt confident in my decision to leave her there alone with him.

Fuck. I hope she’s OK.

On the way home, I called Henry.

“How’d your baby date go?” he said mockingly.

“Well, I’m still weird around babies, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“I didn’t think that would change,” he scoffed.

When my friend Jason presented me with the option of either going to the AP Fall Tour in Cleveland or at home here in Pittsburgh, I didn’t hesitate to choose the 2.5-hour drive to Cleveland because I wanted to go back to Melt.

I mean, I wanted to hang out with Jason.

While eating the fuck out of some Melt.

Saturday morning, Jason and his wife Emily were already standing outside of the back entrance, sentinels in anticipation of an impending line of grilled cheese aficionados. We were soon joined by Jason’s friends Terri and Christian from Philly, who were quick to apologize when it came up in conversation that I once stayed in a motel in Camden. Then I asked if they have ever eaten at Cereality, because that is all I know about Philadelphia. I’m not sure how well I sold the cereal bar, considering my review featured the line: And then I almost threw up on my drive home.

I think these were actually the first words I slapped them with after the standard “how do you do”s. I am not very good at small talk.

Once we were all situated in a booth (first ones in, motherfuckers!), Jason, Terri and Christian all ordered different root beers and I could tell Henry was bursting at the seams to start masturbating their minds with all of his lame bottled beverage knowledge. (And then he orders plain old iced tea.) Meanwhile, Emily’s palate twice rejected the grape soda she ordered so she finally surrendered and just got a Coke. Jason teased her about holding up the ordering process but if it had been Henry, my foot would have swiftly kicked his nuts in lieu of good-natured teasing.

Last May was my first time at Melt and I experienced a complete meltdown behind the curtain of my menu. Absolute ordering paralysis. So many choices! And nearly all of them can be made vegetarian/vegan. So what did I get? A plain old mushroom melt. Granted, not so plain when you get it at Melt, but still – it was a far cry from fancy and exotic. Delicious, but pretty pedestrian when wedged in between a line up of artery-clogging sensations like The Dude Abides (homemade meatballs, fried mozzarella cheese sticks, rich marinara, provolone & romano); Paramageddon (2 potato & cheese pierogi, fresh napa vodka kraut, grilled onions, sharp cheddar); and The Big Popper (fresh jalapeno peppers, cheddar & herbed cream cheese, beer battered, mixed berry preserves), which I almost ordered because my aunt Susie recommended it and also because of the mixed berry preserves (Henry puts jelly on my grilled cheeses at home; it’s the best way to eat a grilled cheese) but I was afraid the jalapeno peppers would ignite bonfires in my stomach for the rest of the day.

But then I saw that the special was the New Bomb Turkey, which could be substituted with seitan turkey, and just like that, all the other options paled in comparison. Terri and Christian are both vegetarians as well, and Terri also ordered the New Bomb Turkey so I didn’t feel like an asshole forgoing the meat like I normally do when I’m eating with a bunch of carnivores and being the “difficult one.” Jason and Emily ordered the regular versions of this, Christian I believe got the Dude Abides with vegetarian meatballs because I remember exclaiming that I might have wanted to get that instead but I already ordered. Henry got something dumb.

Waiting for our food went something like this: Blah blah blah, JONNY CRAIG DISCUSSION, blah blah blah, OH HENRY IS THE BEST FOR BRINGING A CASE OF BOYLANS ROOT BEER EVEN THOUGH IT WAS ERIN’S IDEA, music industry scoop, WHERE IS OUR FOOD MY STOMACH IS REVOLTING & IT SOUNDS LIKE NICKELBACK.

Oh, you guys. It was the most glorious sandwich I have ever had the pleasure of sloppily masticating. I softly cried when I took the first bite, like a woman meeting her baby for the first time. (I did not do that when Chooch was born; I was too shell-shocked and hyper-aware of the fact that beneath the sheet, my abdomen was splayed open like a freshly-fucked corpse on a row of milk crates in the back of a serial killer’s Econoline van.)

The bread alone on this sandwich was enough to grow a food baby in a belly. They use the thickest slabs I have ever seen on a sandwich and I don’t know what sort of liquid heart attack they use to grill it, and it’s probably best that I don’t know, but it makes the most glorious goddamn grilled cheese vessel of all time. If it won an award, Kanye West would probably interrupt its speech just to agree. Greasy as fuck, crispy around the edges, moist in the middle—just the way Henry liked his hooker vaginas when he was in the SERVICE.

And there’s so much going on between the slices, I have no idea how the sandwiches don’t topple over on their way to each table from the kitchen. Even the vegetarian versions had so much seitan turkey jammed atop a soft wad of stuffing, there was no way that bitch was fitting into my mouth (and I do have a big mouth) without the aid of a fork.

It was all the things I never get to have on Thanksgiving, punched inside a towering stack of Paula Deen-approved toast and served with a prescription for Lipitor.

The cranberry dipping sauce was like gilding a lily at that point, but fuck did it make for an ambrosial lily.

I had to take copious breaks, but I managed to polish off an entire half and I felt my stomach expanding sickeningly throughout it all. Henry had already engulfed his entire plate in that time.

Speaking of Henry, here is what he has to say about his lunch at Melt.

Me, watching Henry wash the dishes last night: What was on your sandwich?

Henry, in his standard indignant tone: It was gyro melt.

(I guess this means we’re supposed to figure it out on our own.)

Me: OK, no one cares anyway. How sad were you that you couldn’t sit next to Jason and dish secretly about root beer like two little 1950’s school girls?

Henry, maintaining his Man of Few Words image: I wasn’t.

Me, as Henry takes a hearty swig of Faygo Cola. Dish washing is hard work, ya’ll: What was harder to wrap your mouth around, your sandwich or the words “I do” in 1993.

Henry: Why do you have to do that.

Me: Seriously, which one?

Henry, adopting his “You’re pushing me” high-pitched squawk that I hate so much yet cause so often: I don’t know! Let it go!

(He hates being reminded of That Time in his life.)

Me, furiously scribbling in my important “I’m Interviewing Henry!” notebook (it has monsters on it): If you could have your own sandwich on the Melt menu, what would be on it?

Henry, trying to make my dinner at this point, so you would think I would back off lest a generous sprinkle of rat poison fall into the pot: I don’t know!

(This is assuming Henry has any imagination, but it would probably be some sort of flesh marinated in Faygo and served on a bed of emasculation, with a bandanna as a napkin.)

Me: Did you think our waitress was hot?

Henry: [Looks at me suspiciously and slowly says no. This means YES.]

Me: What about the guy who refilled your iced tea?

Henry, in a flat tone: No, I didn’t pay attention.

(This means he’s already downloaded busboy porn.)

Me: How disappointed were you that none of our lunch companions remarked upon your striking resemblance to serial killer Ed Kemper?

Henry, playing Bakery Story on his phone at this point: I wasn’t.

Me: If you found a finger in your sandwich, would you

• Pull it out and set it aside, then puke in a flower pot;
• Eat it. Meat is meat and they know what they’re doing at Melt;
• Use it to replace the butt plug you lost during the Great Marital Separation of 2001.

I would like to take a second to apologize for my posts being all over the place lately. It seems like I’m posting from my phone more often than not these days and that’s just never good. I mean, not that you guys have come to expect New Yorker-quality syntax and editing on this joint, but you know what I mean.

It took me a month just to recap the haunted houses I want to, I never finished writing about jury duty, the things that happened yesterday in Cleveland are enough to fill up a week’s worth of posts. AND THE APPLES! OH, THE APPLE TALES I HAVE TO TELL! But then I have shit distracting me, like designing an asshole-y Christmas card and using my deaf persona to prank call people. Someone needs to school me on priorities, and fast.

And December is going to be fun, with tons of fodder for this blog, I can feel it. Andrea is flying in late next Friday and she’s staying for an entire WEEK this time.

Hijinx are sure to ensure. I’m having a Pornament Party a week later, where people will come over and desecrate Christmas ornaments and be general, all-around assholes. The Craig Owens solo show is a week later in Cleveland, and I think we’re taking Chooch and Janna along with us this time; Chooch in a new city is always a sight to behold. I’m sorry in advance, Cleveland.

Oh, and then that Christmas thing. Cemetery picnic, holla!

So I will try to be a better blogger, not that I think anyone cares that much about my life (you shouldn’t), but because I get this horrible nagging sensation within me if I don’t get everything down for posterity. It’s a sickness, a mortality thing I guess.

Nineteen years from now, I might desperately need to know every detail about the day I had jury duty so I can save the world, motherfuckers.

But for now, I’m going to luxuriate lazily and think of how excellent yesterday was. I’ll leave you with a video from one of the bands we saw last night. (Henry liked a whopping three out of five bands in the AP Tour lineup!)

Janna and I took Chooch to the playground so Henry could clean the house. It was apparently Dad Day there, presumably because all the moms were out fighting bitches over Black Friday bullshit.

One of the dads was super cute so suddenly I didn’t mind too much that my kid was begging me to push him on the swings.

Anytime someone new would arrive, he would rush over to them and start his interrogation, demanding to know the kid’s name and age. He waked back over to us at one point with Jack (3) and Jack’s dad, who had already been acquainted with Chooch as evidenced by the way he casually said to his son, “Riley wants to play with you Jack, go ahead.

”

I don’t know where Chooch gets it, because Henry and I surely are not socialites.

Then I got to witness Janna’s Special Olympic attempt at hopscotch and laughed so violently that I almost puked up the two apples I had previously eaten. (Tell me what your favorite apples are; I’m trying to eat them all.)

We actually talked about apples a lot at the playground, but you’re probably not surprised. I think Janna was tiring of the subject; she did, however, alert me to that fact that some places offer apples tastings so I will be researching this phenomenon soon.

Later, Henry took us to Pizza Hut, which is one of my least favorite places but Chooch got a certificate for a free pan pizza through the Book It program at school. Our waiter was some mentally-arrested man who was dying to tell someone that a lady, in the throes a Black Friday hysteria, pepper-sprayed other shoppers in some state that is not ours.

So he told us and none of us cared.

But Janna at least pretended to.

Chooch was begging for quarters for the claw machine, but I dared him to eat hot pepper flakes first, so he licked the top of the shaker which I think is even more gross so I gave his stupid ass the quarters.

Friday Night Ice Cream Club!

Henry had his own ice cream club with Marcy and it sickens me.

Later in the night, Henry picked up his mom who was spending the night since she’s watching Chooch today. The Penguins game was nearly over, with like, three minutes left in the third.

We were up 6-3 and his mom was sincerely concerned that we might lose. Then I gave her a glass of wine and she started divulging all kinds of stories about her past lovers and also some scintillating tales about Henry’s ex. Henry wanted no part of that little wine fest. I love buzzed Judy.

And now Henry and I are en route to Cleveland, where we will be gorging on greasy gourmet grilled cheese at Melt with our friend Jason and then heading to the House of Blues for the last night of the AP Tour. I’m so stoked to see Sharks again.

If my blog remains un-updated for more than 2 days, please assume that Henry purposely drove our car over a ravine.

My favorite part is when you can hear Chooch in the background saying, “Her dildo?” Yay, my kid learned a new word!

I love when I split entries into parts and then wait over a week to finish it. That doesn’t fuck with the flow at all. It has taken me approximately two weeks to bang this out and I don’t care about typos at this point.

TerrorTown
I always get a little skeptical when new haunted houses pop up in the city. Oftentimes they end up being huge, overpriced, crowded clusterfucks that become nothing more than a bad memory after one season.

However, the idea of it being located in a basement with known paranormal activity in the Strip District did wonders to sway me. Laura and I got there as soon as it opened, and played it safe by choosing a Sunday night. As I suspected, there were very few people in line, but technical difficulties prevented us from entering the building until well after 7:00.

Once inside, we were immediately ushered downstairs into the basement of a very cold, industrial space which at one time housed a grocery store. We paid our way in and then wended through the rope-lined queue where we wound up standing in anticipation for another 20-30 minutes. The waiting area alone had us creeped out: it was illuminated in corners with red lights and a soundtrack of metal scraping and gears grinding loudly drowned out the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake which was playing on a screen at the front of the line.

Unlike Cheeseman’s, no one wanted to talk to us in this line. In fact, the young couple behind us kept no less than five feet between us at all times. I was kind of offended. But mostly relieved. When we got to the front of the line, however, the lady working the door gave us the 411 on the history of the space, which for real has been proven to be haunted. There used to be a paintball place on one of the upper floors of the building, and employees had reported sightings. The door lady told us that the actors of TerrorTown had been seeing a 10-year-old boy who had died down there years ago.

When it was finally our turn, we were sent inside the doors with the young couple in front of us, where we were then sequestered in a room and berated by a crazy-eyed funeral director.

He let the couple go and made Laura and me stay for some more ear-beatings and I thought I was going to have a stroke. We were then given permission to leave, but she and I were on our own after that and it was fucking scary. I kept imagining in my head that I was going to see that 10-year-old boy ghost and wind up spending the rest of my days in a rocking chair, listening to Katy Perry.

I almost don’t want to write about TerrorTown because I know in my heart my words will never do it justice. I go to a lot of haunted houses. The majority of them are hit or miss. But this one was near-perfection. It was literally like taking a schizophrenic tour through the underbelly of Pittsburgh, where the resident bottom feeders were free to antagonize us and scream in our faces. There was a contortionist dressed as a babydoll in a room that was essentially a landfill of flea market toys; there was a clown hanging out in a living room with Christmas lights (the thick bulbs that I love!) strewn haphazardly and stacks of static-screened TVs lighting up one wall.

It was like walking through the inside of my head and Laura often had to pull me out of each room because I couldn’t stop looking around all wide-eyed and whispering, “Whoa.” It was a creepy picture-taker’s wet dream, OK?

Numerous times we were taken off guard, nothing was predictable. The scares were intense, there were lots of moments that even left us laughing, and those actors were fucking legit. This was one of those places that didn’t need to rely on a chainsaw guy to evoke pee dribbles.

$17 and well worth it. They held us hostage in their twisted underworld of degenerates for at least 30 minutes and it was just a real visual feast. Well executed, scary, fun and I hope it returns next year!

Demon House

Regardless of the haunted house, this night was exciting because it was the first time my brother Corey, my sister Amy, and me were all together. Kind of a long story, but my mom had given Amy up for adoption when she was born and then found her again in 1998 I think it was. I never met her back then, but Corey did. Then Amy found me on her own two years ago and I’m glad she did because she’s an awesome sister and not like our mom at all. (Lucky for her!) Anyway, we all brought our respective date-people with us and it was a grand ol’ time. (Henry was a game time decision.)

As we were walking to the ticket booth, I was filling in Amy and her boyfriend Dick about what they could expect from this particular haunt.

“And the best part is, they give your group a number and then you’re free to mill about or sit by a bonfire, so there are no lines to wait in…

” I said on my know-it-all tone right before we stopped to STAND IN A LINE to buy our tickets. “…except for this line we’re waiting in.”

Because I’m used to being a sort of conversation conductor, I urged Corey to tell Amy about his latest bout with color blinded. I wasn’t even finished suggesting it when he and his girlfriend Danielle began to laugh and shared knowing smirks.

“We were taking bets on how long it would take you to bring that up,” Danielle laughed, I guess because I’m OBSESSED with this story.

Then we got to hang out by a fire while we waited for our number to be called, and I was harrassed by a man wearing a burlap sack over his head. I kind of had a crush on him. It was his heavy breathing that did it for me.

Demon House was decent this year however I was a little angry at one point during the first leg, which is outside and built to mimic a mine shaft. One of the miners was pretty rude and normally that’s part of the schtick, but this guy I think was just rude in real life. He yelled at me for standing too close but I didn’t know where else to go and then I pouted about that for awhile.

Before we got to the actual house, there was a chainsaw guy. I didn’t actually see him, but I heard him and that was enough to send me sprinting ahead of the pack. I made it to the front door of the house and then had to wait alone while the rest of my group calmly walked up the path like sane people.

When Demon House first started about six years ago, I thought their resemblance to Castle Blood was uncanny. I have since learned that it was no coincidence, that they were literally sending people to Castle Blood with video cameras and more or less doing everything in their power to ruin Castle Blood. They have since abandoned the interactive portion of the experience that they so desperately wanted to do better than Castle Blood, and I did have a decent time within the walls (the decor is really good and there are some creepy moments) but knowing what I know now, I won’t be giving them my money in the future.

But the important thing is that I got to hang with my sibs. And we got ride a short bus to and from the parking lot!

Screams

This piece of shit bullshit of a haunt is the biggest waste of money. Last year it was called Hobb’s Manor. So basically they changed the name to trick poor assholes into spending $12 to be completely underwhelmed by a bunch of indifferent teenagers in masks. Also, Laura and I spent longer than it took us to walk through sitting in my car just waiting for the assholes to get their shit together and open the doors.

After that, it took us approximately 10 minutes to walk, not run, through.

And then right outside the exit door, the chainsaw dick made me slip and fall in the muddy lawn.

I was displeased. We should have just went back to TerrorTown. I’m adding these assholes to the Blacklist with Demon House and Scarehouse, which is the haunt that made me start the Blacklist in the first place.

Dormont Dungeon
After getting ripped off at Screams, Laura and I came back to my hood and spent $5 to walk through a tennis court covered with black tarp and garbage bags ad inhabited by a bunch of middle school kids who put more moxie and vigor in their performance than any of those apathetic teens sullying the name of haunted houses.

I was especially enchanted with the little chainsaw boy who chased us through a laundry-line strung tennis court at the end. Laura and I were laughing so hard we were crying.

And THAT is the sign of a fun haunted house.

My friend Sandy and her husband Ben hosted Thanksgiving at their house this year and invited us along with two of their other couple friends.

Sandy said her one friend Brian reminds her of Henry and couldn’t wait for them to meet, but I have to disagree because Brian was definitely way more awesome than Henry. (This implies that Henry is awesome at all.)

Anyway, Henry’s contribution was some complicated mushroom and acorn squash risotto that took forever for him to cook. (“YOU CAN’T RUSH RISOTTO!” he kept screaming, so then why does Chef Ramsey expect his Hell’s Kitchen bitches to cook it that fast? And speaking of good ol’ Gordon, I prayed no one at Sandy’s had Ramsey-caliber palates.)

At one point, I heard him cry out, “OH FUCK!” which is probably not ever a good thing.

It turned out fine though; all the food was amazing. Props to Sandy for making Brussels sprouts taste like something super bad for you.

It’s always nice when my sweet son makes puking motions instead of just saying “No, thanks” when he’s offered something he doesn’t like. I don’t know where he gets that.

What?

Brian is Canadian and made some Yorkshire pudding things which I apparently missed the full experience of since they’re meant to be served with gravy and PETA tells me I mustn’t eat gravy. However, the fact that the puddings were cooked in bacon grease did nothing to deter me.

Meanwhile, Chooch acted like he lived there. He always does that, he has no modesty or restraint whatsoever. If he wants more chocolate milk, he’s going to have no problem telling Sandy’s friend Paul to get the fuck up from the table and prepare him a refill.

Henry and I spend a good portion of our social time doling out apologetic looks to Chooch’s victims.

After dinner, Chooch and Paul went downstairs to work on a 500 piece Charlie Brown puzzle that Chooch had spotted as soon as we got there and went upstairs to retrieve Ben after Henry told him to leave the puzzles alone and just play with the toys he brought in his backpack.

Ben of course pulled the puzzle off the shelf and once again, Sir Chooch got his way.

Then my friend Sarah shared a horror movie cast Thanksgiving photo on Facebook; I showed it to Chooch on my phone, who in turn shared it with his puzzle partner Paul and Brian’s wife Louise. He expertly roll-called all the villains for them, prompting Louise to ask, “Have you seen these movies?”

“Yeah,” Chooch started thoughtfully. “But mommy always covers my eyes so I won’t see the boobs.”

Everyone started cracking up and I was slowly dying on the inside.

“Boobs are bad, but all the blood and violence is Ok!” Louise laughed.

Later, Chooch shared with Paul that, “Mommy draws pictures of Daddy—”

I braced myself, expecting him to say “and his weener.” Instead it was, “with weeners all around him.” So, not so bad right? Henry pointed out later that either one was equally as horrifying for him.

Chooch was really doing a great job illustrating me as a horrible mom.

Henry was engrossed in Dora episodes with Elena, who is 2 while Chooch found two man-children to work on a puzzle with him. Later, all the adults watched three back-to-back episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba, even after Elena left the room to get a bath. I was too brain-dead and bloated to object. One of the episodes showed a plate with glistening slices of apples and then all I could think about was the bowl of apples in my kitchen and how Henry just refilled it that morning with a bunch of varieties recommended to me by my twitter friends and only then did it occur to me that I might have an apple abuse problem but it was still all I could do not pop up off the couch and cheer, “I’m thankful for apples, motherfuckers!”

Hey guess what? You don’t need family to have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Not when you have amazing friends who invite you to spend holidays with them. Thank you, Sandy and Ben. So this is what drama-free holidays feel like!

Manuel had some time to kill today since his life partner Henry does all the cooking for holidays, so he decided to call his friend Bill from Michigan.

Manuel wishes all of you fine people a very Bueno Thanksgiving.

With the deactivation of Manuel’s IP Relay account imminent, he decided he better get in some last minute phone calls to his lover/papi Henry.

I hope the mules don’t get deported, too.

Instead of doing anything useful or worthwhile while Chooch is in school this morning, I scoured the Internet for a non-scuzzy photo of Jonny Craig (no seriously, scoured) to use for the tree topper for this year’s Christmas card.

This card is going to be so shitty, I can hardly stand it. It’s going to be like a Highlights Magazine hidden picture extraganza: Oh Honestly, Erin-edition. No one has requested one yet so that means I’m going to force it on every single person whose address I’ve hoarded.

Christmas card rape for everyone!

Henry is extremely displeased about this.

Got this email yesterday:

What a stupid fucking law!!I can’t believe my make-believe address isn’t good enough for these assholes after all these years.  (Year.)

I forwarded this email to Henry and he snapped. “Don’t fucking do that to me!” he shouted. “I saw ‘deactivated’ and panicked then saw it was just your stupid little game-playing.”

Unless I use a real, confirmable address, Manuel is going to be buried.  Let’s take some time now, bow our heads, finger our crosses, whatever.

In his honor, let’s remember how it all started:

After I posted about that relay calling service during Blogathon, I became determined to find a way to use it again. Especially since I had three prank calls to make in order to fulfill my donor obligations. Using a relay service to make pranks is the ultimate because you get to keep a transcript (which would be good to have as proof for my sponsors), and it’s extra hilarious having an unsuspecting operator do your dirty work. (Plus, it’s even more asshole-y.)

It’s law now that all those services make you register first. So I’m now Manuel Roberts from Maryland. I figure, I’ll use it every day to make normal calls to Henry, like “Please bring home the milk,” so that I can still slip in a few prank calls here and there without arousing suspicion.

I am that dedicated that I’m willing to make this a part of my daily routine. I even downloaded an app for my iPhone.

Yesterday, I had Manuel call Henry to alert him that Circa Survive is playing in Cleveland next November and that he should take his daughter, Erin. (Because why would a deaf person want Henry to go to a concert with them, I figured.) Henry, who is not annoyed by this AT ALL, couldn’t even understand what the foreign operator was telling him, but figured he wasn’t missing much.

Then I decided that Manuel and Henry are life-partners! So I make sure to end all conversations with “OK I love you.”

AnywayS (Alisha likes the extra “s”), I started out with Paul’s request to prank his friend/my e-friend Amelia. Please excuse the typos; it’s a very fast-moving process and I accidentally had it on the setting that automatically enters the text while you’re typing, which is annoying. Paul wanted me to take it as far as I was comfortable with, in order to make Amelia concerned. Usually, messages saying you’re in the hospital work pretty well. Especially when you’re unsure of who it is exactly that is in the hospital.

This was supposed to be a two-parter. I was going to call her the next day and pretend to be the “lady with the knife.” But then she saw my Blogathon post and busted me. It went something (exactly) like this:

Amelia: THAT WAS YOU?

Me:  I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT.

Amelia: BUMMER ABOUT THE KNIFING BUT I’M GLAD THE CULPRIT WAS INJURED IN THE SCUFFLE.

Fuck.

Manuel left a testimonial on the relay site last night:

I would have killed to have been at that game last night, but I’m just as happy to sit here all morning and watch YouTube videos from the people who were there. I missed most of the game because I work stupid evening shift (although I did get to listen to it), but I recorded it so I got to see everything that I missed and I cried approximately 87 times.

Nearly a year off from the NHL, and he comes back to rack up 4 points in 15:54 minutes of ice time, and then goes on record saying that he still “needs to work on some things”?

Yeah, he “sucks”, alright.

Andrea is coming back to visit in December, for a whole week this time. (Mostly to visit my frog FRANCIS! and to watch Lil Wayne videos.) I asked her, “Will you watch a game with me? I mean, we don’t even have to watch the whole thing.”

“Like you could ever not watch an entire hockey game,” she pointed out. And that’s true.

I’m so happy right now. I was beginning to think he was never coming back.

That was really all I wanted for Christmas, so we’re good here, Santa.

Or: Because I’m Too Tired To Write Anything Coherently

It’s been a long time since we hung out with Tommy and Jessy, so we had breakfast with them yesterday and then hit up the flea market for old time’s sake. There was a lot of miscommunication in the past and we are hoping to work through that.

In any case, it was almost like no time had passed at all. Tommy was still a bully to Chooch and me and Jessy and Henry still spilled stuff all over their shirts at breakfast. Ah, sweet familiarity!

I was in religious jewelry heaven this time around at the flea market. The last few times we went had been complete busts, but yesterday had me salivating over so many cases of creep crucifixes and saint medallions. And inside the flea market, I was buying incense off some dude who complimented me on my gargantuan rings (I like really big rings). “Your jewelry looks great on you,” he enthused, and I didn’t really know what to say to that. My fingers say “thanks”? Anyway, from behind his booth his pulled out a tray of some custom sterling rings he had made for someone. In particular, he wanted me to see the Aphrodite one.

It was pretty fucking regal, I can’t lie. I started throwing out some ideas to him and he’s now in the process of fashioning me a custom Ganesh ring and I’m pretty excited about that. Tommy was all repulsed and said he was just using his incense and jewelry-crafting skills as a means to hit on me, but I guess I’m just too dumb to see it.

Henry was being super nice to me all weekend, which makes me believe he’s either cheating on me or finally making some bank from the private school kids he’s selling pills to. I found this bracelet that some jewelry dealer was selling at the flea market and when Henry found out he took credit cards, he bought it for me without me having to whine and stomp my feet and I almost died. Henry does a lot of things for me, but spontaneously buying me gifts is not one of them and I’m (usually) OK with that. The trade-off is worth it to me, but there are times when the Old Erin (read: the spoiled brat who had a pappap who took her to Europe every year from the age of 10) whispers to the New Erin that she should just dump this Faygo-slinger for a sickeningly rich widower. One more happy hour at Bossa Nova and I could probably find one; just sayin’, Henry.

Anyway, this same jeweler was also selling this long wooden box with holes in it. Jessy was intrigued and asked what it was.

“It’s an old-fashioned suppository maker,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Oh. Ok, thanks,” she said and quickly walked away.

I should have bought that, too.

Henry got his boyfriend back, which is probably the real reason why he was being super nice to me.

If I had known Henry was going to be pulling out the ol’ wallet, I’d have made more of a scene about wanting this nightmare-maker.

Later that night, we went to Mike and Laura’s for taco night (THERE WERE BURRITOS THERE TOO, THEY LIED). This was Chooch’s first time over their place and he was getting into everything and making my blood pressure rise. Laura mentioned that she had dominoes and I was like, “Good lord, give it to him!” That actually kept him quiet for awhile, until he started whaling a ball against the wall and spilled a can of Mountain Dew on their carpet and I wanted to throttle him.

Laura said she doesn’t mind him because he makes her laugh, which makes me think she must have had an anvil dropped on her head recently.

Mike mentioned that the throw rug in their living room was from Afghanistan and cost something like ,000 and I quickly said, “Hey, let’s roll this bitch up and move it far away from my son.

” The phrase “bull in a china shop,” tends to conjure up images of the bull having the face of Chooch.

Laura made me drink like 8 pomegranate martinis and then had me play Uno, which was a true exercise in minding my temper. Henry and I can’t play games together without me wanting to vivisect him with the rusty contents of a junk yard. (He has a fear of falling from the sky into the middle of a junk yard. I like to ridicule him about this and then make sure he’s clear that my phobias are legit and non-mockable.)

I’ve never prepared my own tacos before. I’m usually known to pay someone to do that for me, like someone in a restaurant, Henry, or the Mexican drug mule I keep chained to the basement rafters. But on this night, I spread my wings and did it all by myself, but not without asking everyone things like, “Will rice go OK with what I already have on here?” and “Do I like this stuff?” and “Will this be too hot for me?” Laura pointed out that there was cilantro in something, and Henry was quick to smugly point out that, “Oh, Erin won’t eat that then. She hates cilantro” and Mike said, “Oh, well there’s cilantro in the rice too” knowing that I was already enjoying a burrito with said rice stuffed in it.

“I think it’s the lime and cilantro combination that you don’t like,” Henry theorized, but then Mike said there was also lime in the rice.

“Or maybe it’s just your cooking I don’t like,” I retorted to Henry with my own smugness and he acted all ass-raped.

And then Henry finished off the night with a hearty protein shot. It was a wonderful way to close out the weekend, but we will for sure get a babysitter if Mike and Laura ever decide to have us back.

Second chance breakfasts with reunited friends, a fortuitous flea market trip wherein Henry spent more than $1 on a Moroccan souvenir bracelet for me, my kid singing along to Frank Turner in the backseat, taco night later at Laura’s, and now THIS:

BEST FUCKING SUNDAY.