Henry, Chooch and I celebrated Tommy’s birthday tonight with him and Jessy at Luciano’s. Upon watching me check in on Facebook, Tommy asked me what the point was.

“Oh you know, because everyone wants to know where I am,” I said with false bravado.

“So they know not to go there?” he offered.

BURN. Happy birthday, jerk.

Sometimes I sit here and watch 9767896 videos of live Emarosa and Dance Gavin Dance performances because I’m so afraid I will never get to hear Jonny sing in person ever again. PLEASE STOP SHOOTING UP, JONNY CRAIG.

***

In other news, I got my hair chopped off the other day. It’s not man-short, but the longest layers skim my chin. I asked Chooch the next day if he liked it, and without even looking at me, he said, “No.” Granted, he is very surly in the morning, but he is also HONEST. So I was pretty bummed. Right before I took him to school, I prodded him some more.

“Do you think it’s better or worse than before?” I asked, like my future on America’s Next Top Model is on the line.

Watching the news (he watches the news every morning now and is really interested in what the “traffics” is like), he sighed and said, “Well, did you like your hair before?”

I thought about this for a few seconds. My hair was getting to be too long and the ends were pretty obliterated. The color was bland, too. “No,” I answered him confidently.

“Well, then I guess it’s better,” he said in a tone that implied, “Good job, you just answered your own question.”

Naturally, 80% of the office freaked out over it (except for WENDY WHO DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE!!!) and you all know how much I love to be gang-praised. Which is to say, as much as I like to be gang-raped. I think I had longer conversations about it with the boys though, which was kind of weird. Chris even stopped bouncing his fucking orange ball long enough to put his hands under his chin and call me adorable. BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT EVERY GROWN WOMAN WANTS TO HEAR.

No really, I’m OK with “adorable.” When you have the face of a turtle, you will take whatever complimentary handout you can get.

Probably the fact that I pull unflattering faces should be my main concern of model-rejection, not my hairstyle.

I. The Cutie

Henry hasn’t replenished my apple supply in TWO DAYS, so yesterday I was roaming around the department begging for apple handouts.

“No one around here has any spare apples!” I whined to Wendy, who gave me two Cuties as a consolation.

Hours after she left, I was ready for my fruit-meal, but I didn’t know how to start. I just sat there and twirled one around in my palm, looking for the zipper that the Cutie boxes show.

“How do I open this orange thing!?” I texted Wendy.

“OMG you’re a goof!” she texted back, before saying that she was going to display her Poor Henry pin for the rest of the week.

“Hmm, use a knife,” Amber, who is beginning to learn about my idiosyncracies now that I sit on her side of the office, suggested.

“Oh, I can’t use knives,” I said, putting my hands up. “I’ll just make Carey do it.”

But then Carey said her only tried and true method of peeling Cuties is to bite into them to get it started. So I just stabbed it with my fake blood-splatted scissors and went from there.

It was OK, but it was NO APPLE, I’ll tell you that much. And then I started to get angry because one of my co-workers comes from a line of apple orchard people so why isn’t he supplying the office with bushels of that shit? God, people let me down constantly.

II. The Fucking Orange Ball

Two of my co-workers, Chris and Lee, share a bromance so tight it would make even Pauly D and Vinnie blush. What they also share is an orange ball.

A fucking orange ball.

They like to play catch this fucking orange ball, which would be fine if they didn’t both sit behind me and sometimes one of them stands in front of my desk and does the little “Toss it to me!” jig, at which point the fucking orange ball is whaled above my head, tickling my follicles and threatening to hit one of my Jonny Craig pictures. I mean, my son’s pictures.

Other times, Chris announces his presence by dribbling the fucking orange ball around the department.

Apparently today, Chris left a note on Lee’s desk that said “Going to lunch. Watch Ball.”

Lee was the primary caregiver of the fucking orange ball the other day, because Chris was being punished or something. I’m not even sure, their relationship is so complex at times. That day was really bad for me, because Lee tends to be a little more aggressive and there were times my hair legitimately tousled in the wind as the ball grazed the air next to my head. And then he would threaten me with it, telling me I was lucky I had so many picture frames on my desk because he was so tempted to chuck it at the back of my head.

My first mistake was telling them how annoyed I was, how I come to work to get away from this same scenario at my house, where a five-year-old hurls plastic eyeballs against every available surface of the living room. Because of this,  I am trained to instinctively wince and duck every time I hear the dull thud of the fucking orange ball hitting the floor around me.

At one point today, I was holding a stack of papers with both hands while walking toward Chris, who just couldn’t help himself and faked me out with that fucking orange ball. I almost dropped my papers, you guys!

Here is what other people are saying about the fucking orange ball:

• It is so out of control
• I’m going to shove it up Chris’s ass!
• It’s better than a blue one
• What fucking orange ball?

Today, it came close to hitting me again, when Lee tossed it over top my desk to Chris, but it hit the ceiling and nearly ricocheted back down on top of me. Even Chris was like, “THAT WAS TOO CLOSE, LEE!” because Chris knows that if I get Marsha’d, that fucking orange ball is getting stabbed to death by my fake blood and Cutie-splattered scissors.

Natalie happened to be walking by at the height of the ball-bouncing and said the scowl on my face was priceless, even emailed me about it later when she was in her office, reliving my agony.  

“You should replace it with your other orange when Chris leaves,” Carey suggested all deviously. “And then leave a ransom note!”

“Yeah, it’s not like you’re going to peel it,” Kristen, who was here for last night’s Cutie conundrum, mocked.

This statement got me all flustered and I defensively sputtered, “Fruit is weird!”

“Pot kettle!” Kristen exclaimed, and then walked away laughing.

Touché.

(Wendy totally peeled the second Cutie for me today. It was a really big deal. People stopped to watch.)

I know, I know – what’s up with all the old shit these days, right? Just feeling a tinge of nostalgia. I keep coming here to blog for real and then I get all distracted with old photos and Jonny Craig news. (The cats are being treated to his solo ep on repeat and LOUD today; aren’t you envious of them and their pulled-back ears?)

Anyway, this photo was taken in McKees Rocks, near Henry’s work. I remember when I originally posted the whole set in 2008, I got in all kinds of shit from townies who found my post and didn’t take too kindly to the fact that I was basically like, “LOOK I WAS IN THE GHETTO YOU GUYS!” because you know how fantastic I am at making snap judgments and being a wizard with stereotyping. I believe I was told by one McKees Rocks resident to “go back to Happy Valley and stay the FUCK out of our town!” and I was like, “OK THANKS I WILL GO BACK TO MY DUPLEX THAT ONCE HAD A CASUALLY-STREWN ROGUE NEEDLE BY THE DRIVEWAY!

”

(OMG maybe it was Jonny Craig’s!!!)

Then there was the time I posted about some guy who was arrested for shooting people at a bar right by where I took these photos and I called the guy a motherfucker, which really angered his ex-gf who found my blog and chewed me out about how “HE IS NOT A MOTHERFUCKER HE JUST GOT MIXED UP IN SOME SHIT OK REALLY!!!!” and back then I laughed really hard but now that I think about it, I’m fairly certain that’s how I come off when I defend Jonny Craig.

Man, I have had 2008 (and 2005) on the brain lately.

I think I need a vacation from my head.