Hi, hello! The first week of the new Law Firm Walking Challenge has been going swimmingly (walkingly?). The first day, I lapped my way to an easy 20,000 steps by walking to Seri’s house, which is only 1.88 miles away, but to be fair to my awesomeness, I didn’t get there by walking a straight shot – I zig-zagged up and down several side streets, whaddup.

Anyway, I allowed myself to stay temporarily idle long enough for Seri to say nice things to me, stick a bottle of water in my mouth and ply me with a cookie. I had 6800 steps when I arrived at her house, but after walking one block into my departure, I still only had 6800.

STOMACH: SINKING.

But then I realized I had the pedometer showing the aerobic steps, which don’t move until you’ve been walking at a quick pace for a certain period of time.

I had 12,000 steps by noon!

I wasn’t even angry when Teammate Barb called off work! Or when Amber¹ didn’t seem as gung-ho as last time. I even chose to ignore the fact that Carey had less steps than Stephen Hawking and opted to focus instead on the fact that she was even wearing her pedometer at all.

By the time I left work at 8:30, I had 20,000 steps!

This time, I’m doing things differently. I’m staying calm. I’m not going to berate my team members (for now). But apparently, I’m still verbally Bobbiting Henry as ruthlessly as I was last time.

“Oh boy,” he said with mock surprise as he drove me to work on Tuesday (I’d walk if I could). “It’s only day 2 and you’re already being a bitch. Can’t wait until day 5.”

Two hours later, he was driving back downtown to deliver me my TOMS after I discovered that the shoes I wore to work were too painful to aggressively walk in.

God, what a sucker. I mean, thank you Henry! You’re my hero!

Chooch being in school this time around has given me ample opportunity to rack up tons of steps before work. However, Wednesday I had to contend with him being home from school plus RAIN. So I made him mall-walk with me and all the elderlies.

He was thrilled. But we actually had a pretty good time. I was even going to be a decent mom and buy him something for going along with my walking madness.

We walked into Claire’s because he saw Frankenweenie swag as we walked by.

“What brings you here today?” the store manager asked us, and I launched into this manic explanation of the Law Firm Walking Challenge, flashing my pedometer at her as Chooch groaned and the manager appeared sorry that she asked. I guess she was expecting me to exclaim, “Just wanted to buy some sweet ass Hello Kitty pasties.”

Chooch ended up finding a wallet he liked. (“IT’S SO SOFTTTTTTT!” he kept cooing. Meet the lighter side of Chooch, fan of furry panda change purses.)

Speaking of wallets, this was the part of the day when I realized I left mine at home. The Claire’s manager looked super pissed that she listened to my walking challenge story and didn’t even get a sale out of it.

Before we left, Chooch, around a mouthful of giggles, “dared” me to go into Victoria’s Secret. Then he saw a spotted stuffed dog in the middle of the store and said, “Um…I’m just gonna run in there real fast and look at that….stuffed dog.” And that is exactly what he did, rubbernecking around to ogle all the over-sized pictures of models on the wall while he was half-assedly petting the stuffed dog.

Just now, Henry saw Purple Pants walk past the house and said, “She’s probably at about 70,000 steps by now.”  Ugh! I have to go walk some more! I want to walk to Lisa’s husband’s graduation party today but I don’t think I’d make it there on time.

 Today’s “I’m Too Busy Walking to Blog” vintage post is about how I was robbed of $20 but made a new friend.

************* 

“How To Die In the Event of a Rape”

This morning’s Walking Challenge travels took me to the abandoned Bradley School near my house in Brookline. I think it used to be a school for the deaf or blind.

In any case, it is now defunct and creepy as shit. Looks like I found my next photo shoot location.

Get ready, Chooch.

I kept expecting a face to appear in this window…

…and for someone to push my face in this glass.

Here’s Henry’s new house.

On my way back home, some middle-aged creep in red pants stopped me, pointed to a house and asked, “Does Mike Vallatti live there?

”

I gave him my usual canned response of “I don’t know” and then turned around just in time to walk into a telephone pole. Then I came to work and ate cake and a moldy raspberry.

I’m too busy walking to write just now – once I get back into a groove, I’ll be fine! But for now, here is an essay I wrote for my creative non-fiction class in 2008. The formatting is probably all jacked-up, but OH WELL. My pedometer is more important!

—————————————

      “Stop, you’re making me choke on Skittle juice!” Cinn screamed from behind the steering wheel. A long ribbon of highway unraveled in front of us and I grimaced when Cinn said we had at least two hours left in our journey. I tickled our ennui by flirting with the driver of every vehicle that had the misfortune of passing us, only exciting the burly and unwashed-looking men manning the gigantic semis that made compact cars like Cinn’s sway perilously.

Two days earlier, I was meeting Cinn in person for the first time after several encounters in a gothic chat room called DarkChat. She arrived at my apartment, her shocking red locks were closely shorn to her pate and jutted out in spikes here and there, and we went off to buy our costumes for the upcoming Type O Negative show and Dracula’s Ball in Philadelphia. I knew nothing about her but that she was twenty-eight to my nineteen and lived only a short jaunt away from me. I didn’t even know she was married until that weekend, when I arrived at her house at the designated departure time, but somehow the particulars didn’t seem to apply to this friendship – we had somehow managed to connect based on something entirely more intrinsic than a/s/l.

Agreeing to go on this trip was just what I needed, coming off the heels of a tumultuous summer filled with break-ins, having my wallet pilfered and car stolen (and then ever-so-thoughtfully returned hours later) by people I thought were friends.  It was a summer that started off strong, full of parties and crushes and a bounty of alcohol, but by the end, it had become a twirling tailspin of depression, loneliness and the stark reality that 99% of the people with whom I shared my apartment weren’t going to be there when I needed them. I had taken to living as a near-recluse, keeping my heavy curtains perpetually drawn, even on sunny-skied days. During this self-imprisonment was when I stumbled across the chat room. At first it was nothing more than a release for my pent up aggression, a place admittedly to flame and mock the suicidal Goth kids; but then I began noticing that there was interesting conversation scrolling past the screen, people gushing about bands that I liked. Before I realized what was happening, I was being sucked in to this strange realm of pale-faced misfits. And I fit in because I was a misfit too.

***

Our dresses hung like black-laced shrouds from the garment hooks in the back of Cinn’s car. The plan was to check into a hotel when we arrived in Philadelphia, change into our off-the-Hot Topic-rack gowns and meet up with another DarkChat user, Your Druidess. I had never chatted with this lady before, but Cinn confidently assured me that she would be standing outside of the Trocadero with our free tickets to the Type O show. Here I was, recuperating from a summer full of broken trust, only to turn around and hand over what little left I was able to scrape up  to this strange woman who I essentially knew nothing about. However, I would be lying if I said I didn’t consider, at least once, that this woman with her Simon LeBon coif was a real vampire, luring me to a sinister abattoir for Internet chat room newbies under the guise of some gothic jamboree. Maybe I might have second guessed some of her innocent sidelong glances, seeing them instead as the shifty glance of a nervous Internet predator.  I would later learn that she was nervous – of what I was furiously scribbling in my vacation journal.

Her real name was Allison, but she preferred to be called by her online moniker – Cinnamon Girl — and preferred to call me by my chat handle, too – Ruby. Conversation flowed easily between us, even though we had engaged in minimal chat room interaction, and I diligently noted in my journal that she kept count of every cemetery we passed, had an eye for spotting majestic trees, and churned out a myriad of cheesy one-liners, such as “Call me a bitch, but call me” and “Boobage is like mileage,” which I still don’t really understand even a decade later.

My friends thought I was making a mistake by coming on this trip. Meeting people on the Internet is bad idea, some of them said, trying to deter me. This isn’t going to end well. You don’t even know her. Do you even like Type O Negative?

Aside from a cover of “Summer Breeze,” I knew little about Type O Negative, but Cinn changed that with a nonstop Type O curriculum in the car.

I’ve been a fan ever since, though it’s a wonder I didn’t wind up abhorring them.

But that wasn’t the point. It could have been any band, it could have been Anal Cunt, and I still would have said yes. It was something that at nineteen years old, after the reality of the summer’s end had set in, I felt I really needed to do. It would be an experience, something to write about, a story to tell.  I wasn’t in college; I wasn’t living in a dorm and going to frat parties or spending semesters abroad. It may have been just a trip to Philly, but it was more than that to me.

***

“We’re not going to have time to find a hotel,” Cinn said, exhaling a heavy sigh of defeat. We had finally reached the city only to be met with gridlocked traffic. “Start putting your makeup on.” She tossed me my bag from the back seat and I bedaubed my eyelids with a layer of glitter thick enough to make a drag queen proud and possibly get some change tossed at me if I stood on a corner.

“Do I have to wear these fake eyelashes?” I groaned, tumbling the plastic package over in my palm, in search of instructions. I had already managed to squirt glue in my eye before she had a chance to say anything, but in my journal I wrote that she physically forced me to adhere them to my eyelids else I’d sleep on the streets that night.

We squeezed into our slutty Morticia dresses in the tight confines of a dingy gas station bathroom. The fluorescent white track lighting made my normal complexion look legitimately sallow and I wished I could achieve that look at the ball. Cinn made that wish her own reality by heavily coating her entire face with white powder, a measure I was unwilling to take. Cinn accidentally dropped a ten dollar bill in the commode.

***

Your Druidess never showed up.

We stood dejectedly outside the Trocadero for an hour, watching hordes of Type O fans bustling into the sold out show, clutching onto hope so fleeting, it was like cocaine sifting through our fingers. I silently breathed a sign of relief though, because I wasn’t 100% on board with donning my ridiculous Goth uniform anywhere other than Dracula’s Ball. Cinn was openly weeping over this  imbroglio when a big-wheeled pick-up truck sped past, Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” blasting ironically at high volumes from the windows. I shot my fist into the air and saluted.

Your Druidess is a stupid name, anyway.

***

Refusing to let Your Druidess’s blunder ruin our trip (she was probably a fifty-year-old fisherman, anyway), we decided to make the best of it and seek out the Dracula’s Ball, which we had planned to attend after the show. Driving through Central City on Halloween night, past loading docks and alleys full of shadowed forms, I began to understand why the Fresh Prince’s mom made him move to Bel Air. It didn’t seem like we were in the right place and my old friend Panic began to rise again up my esophagus, like a recently ingested model’s salad. It burned.

She’s going to stab me with her fake fangs and roll my body into the river. But before I let my paranoia get the best of me by hurling myself from the moving car, I spotted an undulating line of poorly dyed raven locks, billowing capes, and sparkling neck-bound crucifixes. We had found the Dracula’s Ball. In my head, I rejoiced with the Tabernacle Choir.

***

       This is high school all over again, I thought as I came precariously close to being engulfed by the obnoxiously large black velvet couch on which I sat, like a shell-shocked Alice at a tenebrous tea party, while Cinn was over at the bar getting refreshments. My feet dangled inches from the floor, the chair was that ludicrously oversized. Cinn came back with a beer, which I grabbed for desperately (and I don’t even like beer), but she handed me a glass of Coke instead, mouthing off some spiel about not contributing to minors.  And here I thought we were bros.

We were the first people to be let in, having been hand-picked in front of everyone by Malachi, Philadelphia’s Baron of Goth. I never did find out who he was supposed to be, but I know that girls swooned when he neared them and men shook his hand with great respect shining in their eyes. A top hat nestled stately upon the carefully tousled kohl hair framing an alabaster face; a tailed tuxedo suitable for Marilyn Manson to wear to the market and a cane imprisoned within the grip of a white-gloved hand finished off his meticulous look.  He could be a vampire. He could really be a vampire. When he approached us with an extended palm, every girl gasped in envy. Murmurs of our luck resounded around us as we advanced to the doors, leaving everyone to reapply their black eyeliner in disgust.

It smelled like a clove and anise cocktail inside the Ball, with a slight trace of sweat and smoke coalescing to provide an acrid after-scent.  Black velvet and gossamer draped from rafters, chandeliers, and limbs, like gauze on an unraveling mummy.

Tall, emaciated boys in high-collared shirts with frilly sleeves strutted to and fro, arms akimbo, feet stuffed into thick-soled black Creepers, while girls spiraled dream-like around the dance floor, giving off the illusion that they were floating above the ground as they skipped in staccato patterns, yet managed to retain their fluidity; cupping their hands into cordate offerings, they contorted their arms in hypnotic patterns which a friend would later tell me he dubbed “Passing the Ball of Energy.” Every third girl had some variation of fairy wings clipped to her back and none returned my smiles.

You know those stares you get when you leave the house accidentally still wearing the skin-suit you fashioned from your last murder victim? It was like that.

I tried to tell a girl I thought she danced beautifully and she all but hissed in my face while dripping gobs of glitter much like the molten blobs of wax that plop from tilted taper candles. And here I thought I had escaped the Prom two years before; this must have been Thomas Jefferson High School’s revenge. The girls could see right through my façade, sniffing the scent of my dress’s cheap threads and knowing that it wasn’t purchased in some Elizabethan boutique, branding me a poseur. The acceptance I once felt in the Goth chat room was all but shattered when I was forced to stare this culture in the face, without the shield of a computer monitor.

Feeling safe with my roots in the wall, my aphasia and I remained sidelined for most of the evening.

***

“What’s an egg cream?” I asked Cinn, scanning the menu at Silk City Diner. It was 11:30PM and the diner was sprinkled with several other Ball escapees. Cinn said that we would see how we were feeling after we got some food in our stomachs, that we’d decide then if we were going to go back to the Ball. Under the table, I crossed my fingers for a vomitous outburst, an exploding appendix, an arm severing spontaneously.

Minutes later, the waitress had convinced me that egg creams were quite possibly the most delicious refreshments one could ever want to flow down their gullet; I imagined Jesus ripping himself from the cross and striding purposefully into the nearest diner and ordering a tall glass of creamed eggs. “What’s the first thing you’ll do when you get down from that cross, Jesus?” “Get myself a nice cold egg cream, friend.” And how could Jesus be wrong?

The waitress slid a tall glass of egg cream along the Formica table top. I should have known I couldn’t ever agree with Jesus. It was disgusting. A foaming cylinder of soda water and chocolate syrup, essentially. I didn’t know what eggs had to do with it, but there must have been a lot of courage infused into that vile libation, because I felt recharged and feisty, like the Erin I was before my generosity and effervesence had been wringed dry like an old ratty dish rag. Mounting the sparky-vinyl booth, I shouted, “Can I have your attention? We’re from Pittsburgh and I’d like to take your picture!”

In a surprising twist, everyone graciously obliged. It was like an awakening for me, a reclaiming of that spark that had been robbed from me that summer, the lack of which had quickly shoved me into a shell. I felt rejuvenated from my moment of bravery and decided that I wanted to go back to the Ball.

But first I had to wait for Cinn to emerge from under the table.

***

She introduced me to the man with red irises, long and slick black hair, and two sets of fangs, saying his name was Tom and that she had met him earlier in the night, during her quest for beverage which should have taken five minutes, not thirty. Suddenly oblivious to my presence, they began making out and I had a feeling this wasn’t the first time their tongues met that evening. I rolled my eyes and wandered around the building, curious what I might find on the other floors.

The basement was a crypt for kegs and an astringent aroma of cloves and mildew which made my nasal passages feel unwelcome. The second floor seemed dandy until I entered a room that was like walking into a bathroom at Studio 54. Sickly Goths lounged languidly around tables of blow. I had a feeling that probably wasn’t the best room for me to be loitering. I’m a very addiction-prone girl.

Not really feeling comfortable anywhere inside (except Vendor Alley, where I threw down fifty dollars on a red leather bat choker with wings so salient they bore small holes into the skin of my throat while I wore it), I relocated to a stoop outside, taking solace in my pack of Camels and scribbled furiously in my journal. I began panicking about where I was going to sleep and how I was going to get home, because I realized I had no idea of Cinn’s intentions.  I felt threatened by this man Tom. Women get weird when men enter the picture. I hoped that I wasn’t about to get ditched, although it wouldn’t be the first time.

I returned the raucous salutations of inebriated passers-by, declined offers of rides and wild nights, and accepted a stamp pad which I promptly tossed to the side, afraid it might be laced with acid or whatever hallucinogenic was popular on the streets of Philly. A homeless man sang in my face until I silenced him with a crumpled dollar.

As I lit my fifth cigarette with cold-shook hands, I heard a shrill voice reverberating down the sidewalk on a wave of the pulsating beat of Electric Hellfire Club.

***

Every October, I feel nostalgic for that music. I fill my autumns with a rotation of goth-rock bands like Sisters of Mercy and Christian Death; I remember the way those people danced and looked so free, and still wish I could fit in with them. But instead, I listen to this music alone, this time in the warmth of my house, and not from a curb outside of a club, on a cold hemorrhoid-incubating slab of city concrete. Not only am I fake Goth, but a seasonal one at that.

***

“Jesus Christ, I’ve been looking all over for you! I thought you had been stolen, and I was so scared. And then I kept thinking about your damn journal and all the made-up stuff you were writing about me, and what would the cops think—-” She roughly pulled me into her, hugging me tight and petting my hair.

It was a scene straight out of a crowded department store at Christmastime, except that I wasn’t a crying child silently thanking Santa for helping her Mommy find her, but a nineteen year old girl with rogue specks of glitter scraping her eyes and a sleep-deprived surliness.

Tom was still saddled protectively to her side.

***

“Are you sure you’re not hungry? We can stop there,” Carl said, jabbing a finger out the car window at some fast food chain. “Or there.” It was the third time he suggested this supposed good intentioned pit stop. I was seated awkwardly in the passenger seat of his truck, my dread-filled eyes staring straight ahead, glued to the back of Cinn’s car.

Tom had invited us back to his apartment and devised a brilliant plan which put him in the driver’s seat of Cinn’s car, while I was pawned off on his friend Carl, who appeared to be an amalgamation of Ozzy Osbourne’s and Michael Bolton’s genetic markers. Translating this to mean that Tom and Cinn wanted to spend time alone, I acquiesced – but not without a loud, throat-scraping exhale, the kind that every teenager perfects, to illustrate my annoyance — and joined the lascivious Carl, who was desperate for an excuse to stall our reunion with the others.

“No, really. I’m not hungry. I just ate two hours ago. A lot. I ate a lot. Four courses, at least.”  My gaze remained indestructible, refusing to let Cinn’s car out of my sight.  “Maybe even eight,” I mumbled in an undertone. I’m going to be so pissed off if I get raped tonight, I thought bitterly.

***

Tom’s apartment was what you’d expect for a man convinced he was a vampire: no matter where you placed your ass, an animal print of some sort was promised to be underneath; black pillar candles occupied every free surface area; Egyptian relics and religious tchotschkes gave the room a very underground Pier 1 ambiance.

I was trapped on Tom’s couch for three hours, during which I suffered through a painfully awful vampire movie (Vampire Journals), and even worse, Tom’s lame attempt at humorous commentary; a photo op for Carl, in which I appeared to be shrinking back inside of myself while Carl ravenously leered over my shoulder (a photograph I treasure to this day); and Tom’s guided tour through the technological wonderments of WebTV.

While Tom was searching for a better ankh image to embed in his email signature, I slipped out to Cinn’s car where I proceeded to collapse into frustrated tears in the passenger seat. It was 6AM and I wanted to sleep, but not in Tom’s perverse lair. Cinn came after me, and I sobbed about not knowing what Tom keeps under his floorboards and not wanting to sleep in the same room, building, state as Carl, and I complained of the searing pain I was feeling in my eyebrow. I had just had a new ring put in days before, by a husky goliath in a piercing parlor who looked like he could have just shimmied down Jack’s beanstalk. The gauge was all wrong, but he forced the purple hoop through the miniscule holes in my brow. When I awoke, I was supine and groggy on a couch, and he showed me the paper towel drenched with my blood.

“I need to wash my face,” I wailed, hiccupping on tears. “This glitter is really making my piercing hurt.”

Probably scared of what fabricated tale I was bound to weave inside the purple cover of my vacation journal, Cinn placed her hands on my shoulders and promised we would leave right then. She was true to her word. She drove all morning, stopping near Hershey to feed me a nutritious breakfast of raspberry Danish and strawberry muffin.

***

After that weekend, Cinn and I forged a sisterly relationship, which isn’t always a good thing, but I know that she would save my life if she could. We’ll go for months, sometimes years, without speaking, but underneath it all, it was like we survived a train wreck together, a Gothic train wreck of spider-webbed carnage and fish netted limbs, anise smoke and novelty fangs, and that alone bounds us together, no matter our differences or penchants for running off with mysterious strangers. I still haven’t found my place in life, an accepted membership into some snobby subculture, but I’m OK with that. I like being the girl with a cover no one can judge.

***

The night after I returned home found me in the emergency room, with a doctor surgically extracting my eye brow ring, barely visible amongst the swollen patch of eyelid that caused people to mistake me for a mongoloid.  “Look at all the puss that came out!” he lectured me, while two nurses vowed to never let their daughters get pierced.

I still have a scar.

I wanted to get one last mini-shoot in before the Law Firm Walking Challenge started. (Today! But don’t worry – I already racked up 12,000 steps before noon). I’ve had this loose little vision in my head for awhile now to use some of my old Alternative Press magazines in a photo shoot with Chooch, but didn’t really know where I wanted to do it, so we drove around and drove around for a good hour until I saw a closed-up ice cream shop and made Henry pull over.

The Boylan’s is going to spill in 3…2….

Two kids rode past us on bikes just in time to witness me blow up like a bi-polar director.  Henry and I broke up. I orphaned Chooch.

It was a bad scene.

Henry thought he was in the clear after I lost my temper for the 87th time outside of this ice cream in Monongahela and screamed, “THAT’S IT, I’M DONE!” But then my other personality piped up and bellowed, “NO, WE ARE NOT GOING HOME! I’M NOT DONE!” So I made Henry drive back to the first location we were going to use until I got too scared of squatters. At this point, if there WERE any squatters there, they’d have been afraid of ME. Oh, I was horrible yesterday. Yet Chooch is so unfazed by it.

This is the Boylan’s after it’s third upending. Chooch was actually trying to read the magazine and kept getting pissed off at me when I would tell him to stop turning the pages.

Boylan’s puddle to the left.

Then I threw another fit and made Henry put everything back in the car, only to realize that we hadn’t taken any pictures in his second outfit. So doors were kicked up, trunks were slammed, various euphemisms for “vagina” and “person who engages in fellatio” were flung (possibly just by me), but the good news is that Chooch must have liked this outfit better, because he was suddenly very eager to cooperate.

So we kept taking pictures while Henry leaned against the car and pouted.

I swear to god, he’s not actually this forlorn. Almost all of these poses were his own idea, and he was running around happily in between shots. I SWEAR.

This wasn’t mid-motion, he was actually posed like this like a weirdo.

He said this was his “don’t even think about following me into my house” pose.

Rough life.

The “I just found gold” pose.

And then we were all bros again after that!

8 comments

Ever since Barb found out that Chooch blows a gasket when I get stuff in the mail (other than bills) and he doesn’t, she began sending him random cards and dollar bills in the mail, signed “Secret Friend.”

His perplexity seems to outweigh his delight in adding to his dollar collection. I am thoroughly enjoying watching him drag his hand through his hair, grit his teeth and yowl, “WHO IS SENDING ME THIS STUFF?!” And when she sent him a card wishing him luck on starting first grade? Holy shit, the apoplectic explosion was Pay Per View-worthy.

“HOW DO THEY KNOW I’M IN FIRST GRADE?

!!?” he wailed.

“Maybe I should stop,” Barb laughed when I told her how distressed this is making him. “I don’t want to cause any psychological damage!” (Yes, let’s blame Barb when Chooch grows up to be the next Unabomber, not me!)

“You should send him a picture of Gilad,” I instigated. (Gilad is the Israeli fitness guru behind the long-running aerobics program “Bodies In Motion” which, along with Slim Fast, helped me lose weight in time to be a junior bridesmaid in my aunt’s wedding when I was 12, after my grandma jiggled my underarms and flashed that disapproving frown I knew so well. Anyway, this show is still on in syndication and Chooch HATES HIM so bad that he has to leave the room.

)

I guess she’s too afraid of pulling the wrong Jenga block from his psyche, so she sent him more anonymous cash, which he got yesterday.

“REALLY!? ANOTHER LETTER FROM SECRET FRIEND!?” he huffed. Then he kind of growled and shook his head.

I feel like if I had been sent secret mail as a child, I’d have been filled with joy and hope that it was my real mom sharing with me the modest income she was earning baking baguettes in France.

Chooch wrote this message on the back of the envelope. I guess we’re supposed to put it back in the mail. Minus the money, of course.

Shit, you’d think he was getting cat livers in the mail, not cash.

This has been wildly entertaining for me.

In traffic. Windows down.

(Oh shit, he just started yelling at me, HAHAHAHA.)

• Last Sunday, we were hanging out at Castle Blood (well, Henry was actually HELPING out at Castle Blood). I was super stoked because my friend Dawn is here from Canada for the Halloween season, so Chooch and I  totally pulled her away from her haunt-related duties and made her entertain us. At one point, we were playing 20 questions. When it was my turn to come up with something, I had only just barely said, “OK, I got one” before Dawn yelled, “Jonny Craig!”  “Dammit!” I hissed, just as Chooch burst into tears because he knew it was Jonny Craig too but Dawn had the nerve to beat him to the punch. They’re totally frenemies now.
• Speaking of haunted houses, I scared Chooch so good at his grandma Judy’s apartment (and Judy, too) that he punched me and then cried. I asked him how he’s going to go to any haunted houses when I scare him so easily and he said, “Yeah, well you’re SCARIER than a haunted house.” YESSSS. I finally feel some level of success in this world!
• But then I go to work and receive my penance every time I work late shift with my nemesis Brad, who sometimes scares me without even trying. One time last week, he came up behind me and smacked my pen out of my hand. I really need to buy some mace. Or eyes for the back of my head. I’m so paranoid there.
• I’ve been using Boggle to help Chooch with spelling, and it’s been totally fun (for me) because I love shaking up those letters. And being the best. Don’t worry, Chooch. Someday you’ll be able to obnoxiously correct all of Daddy’s 2nd grade-level spelling mistakes, too. (And yes, “stab” was the first word we found.)
• 
• Henry still hasn’t made a website for me to sell the pendants. “Aw, damn!” says absolutely no one.
• Me, bitching about priorities: “All I want to do is look for haunted houses, think about haunted houses, and text my friends about going to haunted houses.”
  Henry: *Frown of the Day*
  • No, seriously. This is all I have been doing. I have my little calendar pages printed out and people’s names/haunted attractions penciled in everywhere. I was poring over it at work the other night and one of my co-workers was like, “What are you doing? It looks like you’re trying to figure out your Trig homework.” BECAUSE IT’S SERIOUS BUSINESS, OK?
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    You don’t keep haunted house journals since you’re 16 and then treat your October planner casually.

    • Unfortunately, this is the time of the year I always miss my mom.
• At work the other day, Amber¹ got a call from some dating site called It’s Just Lunch. She came over and was telling Barb and me about it, that her friend must have referred her.
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  This perked my ears up. “Refer” you say? I got that super-creepy throaty giggle and raced to the website, where I entered all of Henry’s info, in spite of  Barb’s discouragement. About a half hour later, I got this text:     You’re welcome, Henry!

  • Then I started to panic. What if he actually found someone?! Barb calmly said, “Don’t worry. It’s just lunch.” Touché, Barbara! But then Amber reminded me that it costs $1000 to sign up, and I don’t think Henry is that desperate to get out. At least, I hope not. However, if I find out that he suddenly has a spare grand to spend on this when I’ve been sitting on a broken couch for the last 5 years, you can bet I’ll make it so he has a difficult time finding a woman who wants to date his castrated self.
• Some kid made the sign of the cross when he walked past our house on Thursday. Either this is because we live across from a church, or we’ve just really built up quite the reputation.
• Thursday night, Henry texted me all excited because he bought himself a Scooby-Doo Chia Pet. Apparently, he was deprived of one as a child. I was like, “OK, that’s wonderful, but please get Marcy toys while you’re out.” So he bought her (and stupid Willie) a bag of cat nip pom-poms, which he left on the dining room table.
  • The next morning when Chooch and I went downstairs, we found the Chia Pet on the floor, shattered into hundreds of pieces, and pom-poms scattered all over the house. At first, we pointed fingers at Willie, but as the day went on, Marcy was looking more and more suspicious.
• Barb yelled at Lee a few weeks ago (to her defense, he made an ill-timed, insensitive joke about the Paper Clip Situation at work, which I’m not sure I’ve ever explained on this blog, but it’s really stupid and petty and has Barb and I completely up in arms as it’s mostly directed toward us). Because of this, Lee has been calling her Darth Riley ever since and asked me to make this, which is now printed out and taped on her desk:

• Yesterday, Barb was trying to email her Darth Riley picture to her brother, but accidentally sent it to one of the Firm partners in Spokane, who is probably in his 80s and his picture tells us that he probably hasn’t laughed since 1959, while watching Leave It To Beaver. Her face was so red, and so was mine — FROM ALL THE HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER HEATING IT UP. I had to actually get up and run away from my desk because I was losing it so bad.
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  She thinks she may have been able to recall the email, but I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope he saw it. I actually hurt my back from laughing!

• Before I left for work yesterday, Henry was watching me put on blush and said, “You’re so cute. You’re like a little doll.” But then he got another call from It’s Just Lunch and took it all back.

Tonight I’m having dinner with some of my favorite ladies, so I’m really looking forward to drinking a lot of wine and laughing some more at Barb’s expense. But right now, I have to go on Chooch’s tour of Halloween stores, where I will say goodbye to half of my paycheck.

Apologies for the bullet points. This is all I can muster right now, blog-wise.

As if I wasn’t already totally clingy and obsessed with Marcy, having two of my cats die 5 months apart has only worsened my attachment. Sometimes I have to force myself to let go so I don’t hug her to death.

We’ve still been flip-flopping about getting a kitten to fill the void, but considering I still can’t visit Speck and Don’s graves without crying, or seeing other kittens without crying (especially chubby gray boy kittens), I don’t think this is in the cards for us.

Plus, my friend Jessi recently shared an article about caring for elder cats, and it said that introducing a rambunctious kitten to an older cat is not the best idea. I was telling Henry about this yesterday.

“I mean, can you imagine Marcy with a kitten?

She’s already annoyed enough with—-”

“You,” Henry said, cutting me off.

“—Chooch.”

But he’s right. I totally annoy the piss out of that cat. But I think she secretly likes it. Maybe?

This was right after I made her watch the finale of So You Think You Can Dance.

I kept poking her and asking, “Marcy, did you see that!? WHO DO YOU THINK WILL WIN!?!?” She responds by ruffling her fur and shifting her body away from me.

I JUST LOVE HER SO MUCHHHHHHHH. :(

[EDIT: She just totally fucked up my hand.]

2007

2008

2009

2011

2012 :(

I have to go back and try to get some souvenir wood.

Amber¹ and I were standing around, watching Barb apply her “I’m Going to the Cheesecake Factory” mascara, like two little girls ogling mommy putting on her face for the milk man.

“You have such nice eyelashes,” Amber¹ sighed. Barb hasn’t turned on her yet, so Amber still says nice things to her.

“Oh, you should have seen how nice they were when I was younger!” Barb totally bragged, before boasting about her hairstyles of yesteryear.

“You should bring in some pictures,” I suggested. (I was going to say “Pics or it didn’t happen” but was fearful that I might have to explain to her what that means. Barb, if you’re reading this and don’t know, ask someone under the age of 30.) “We can use them for your interview!” I added excitedly, imagining Barb on my blog in a beehive.

(Talk about a neo-Beatles song title.

)

“Yeah! When is that going to happen?” Amber asked.

I thought about it for a second. “We should probably wait until November, after all the Halloween stuff and Walking Challenge* craziness.”

“Yeah,” Amber scoffed. “If you guys are even still friends after that!”

Barb is on our walking team, so this is a very valid concern that Amber wisely brought up.

(*Walking Challenge Fall Edition starts NEXT MONDAY, AHHHH!!)

***

Speaking of Barb, she admitted to me last week that she almost prevented me from getting hired here, after telling our supervisor, “Oh, I don’t know. She has a little kid and will probably be calling off all the time.” You know how many times I’ve called off since getting hired in April 2010?

ONE TIME. IN YOUR FACE, BARB!

I will try not to let this bias her interview.

This band got me through the weekend. If this show was tonight and not November 27th, I would feel a lot better.

———-

Eight years ago, someone close to me was killed. Not close as in we were good friends, but  close in that our jobs required us to see each other’s faces for 8 hours a day. His death has always bothered me because mere days before it happened, I had found myself in a screaming match with his dad – my boss. A screaming match about him, which ultimately led to me and my co-worker Carol storming out and never looking back.

I walked into that job in 2000 with all the naïve confidence and self-esteem of a 20-year-old girl and all I took with me 4 years later was a trauma-derived stutter and a crippling fear of offices which would leave me unemployed for nearly 3 years—the beginning of an avalanche of financial duress which we are still trying to clean up.

(And Henry. I got Henry out of the deal.)

I know his death wasn’t my fault, that’s not really what this is about. And I kind of feel too mixed up and sad and tired to try and explain, because explaining means going into the whole story. And the whole story is a saga, really, which I’m technically not permitted to share, a stipulation of the settlement I was awarded after a mediation with the EEOC.

But, maybe someday.

Eight years later, I still have nightmares about what happened. The flashbacks to the phone call. He’s still alive in my dreams. I still think I see him sometimes when I’m out. (This just happened on Saturday.

That “Oh shit, it’s—-wait. No, he’s dead” heart-clutching moment.) And that is how I ended up standing awkwardly in a Jewish cemetery yesterday morning, looking for a closure which may or may not exist.

I had wanted to do this back in 2004, but I just wasn’t ready. But I needed to see it yesterday. Chooch—had he been born a day earlier, would have shared his birthday with this man’s death day—helped me lay down wildflowers along the gravestone. Chooch kept asking me questions that I wasn’t ready to answer.

I couldn’t stop staring at his picture etched into the marble.

We went to see Speck and Don at the pet cemetery after that, and that’s where I really cried, which is what I have needed to do for weeks now.

Smiling (and laughing like a crazy person) through the sadness only gets us so far before we eventually have to deal with it.

It’s no secret that I hate my house with every fibre of my being and it is probably the main cause of my unhappiness. Everything else in my life is either really great or good enough. But this house. Ugh, this house. I’ve lived here for 13 years now — renting. And this place has housing leprosy – the ceiling is falling down, the tiles are coming up, etc etc.

This house hasn’t felt like a home in a LONG time.

But it’s not our house. Hopefully we will own our own house someday, but until then I decided that instead of being a big crybaby about hating my house, I’m just going to deal with it and start decorating again like I used to.

I started with the fireplace mantel and window sill and I feel better already.

Now if only I can get rid of Henry and all his shit…

Hard to take pictures in the dark, but it loses its effect when lit.

Yay Halloween!

****

I’ve been so overwhelmed with life these days, like if I were a celebutante, now would be the time to check into rehab for “exhaustion.” I even had a small break down at work last week, which was totally embarrassing and it’s all because I’ve been so emotionally sensitive lately.
 

I’ve had to say no to people. I hate saying no. I want to say yes and help out everyone with all the things they’re doing, or want to do, but the reality is that I’m at a buffet with a saucer. The more I take on, the more half-assed everything turns out. And that makes me unhappy. And also physically ill.

My priority has to be this house, and looking for a new house. (And also looking for a new couch: one that isn’t broken and slowly giving us scoliosis. Then maybe I can let people come over again.

Breaking everything down into small projects makes me feel like maybe this is manageable, and maybe one day I won’t feel panicked and miserable every time I walk through my front door. I won’t lie though: I’ve been thinking that maybe blogging needs to either go on the back burner or just go. That might be a hard addiction to break, but sometimes I think I would be happier in the end. Who knows.

March, 2009. God, I miss that hoodie. I mean, those days. (?)

Seri is a girl who knows what she can and cannot handle when it comes to rides at the county fairs. Spins too fast? Not with this hair. Goes upside down? That’s not for her. In fact, I truly believe that she wore a dress to the fair just so she’d have a back-up excuse for not wanting to ride the Superman.

Which was why I was so shocked (pleasantly so) when she said she’d ride the Cobra and I didn’t even have to pout, make her feel like a failure as a friend, or play the “Remember when I saved your life?” game to get her on it.

Granted, when she asked me if that ride was OK, I might have omitted the part where it makes your head feel like Jeffrey Dahmer is all up in there with an egg whisk.

We got in line just as the carny was letting everyone off the ride, which was good because that meant she wouldn’t have to see it in action and how it makes everyone’s face look like they’ve just been photographed after watching the video in “The Ring.” The carny then walked over to the gate, but instead of letting us on, he left.

Just walked away without a word.

After a minute or two, the people in front of us split. Then everyone behind us gave up too. I knew that the moment we left the line the carny would come back, so I insisted we wait it out. “He’s probably just in the bathroom,” I said, and then immediately made myself stop thinking about what he was doing to himself in there. He returned a few minutes later. Of course he did, what else has he got to do?

OK. Don’t answer that.

When he came over to lower our safety bar, he remarked on my fading hand stamp and said, “You should go and ask them to re-stamp that” and something about how “some people here are assholes”; he went on to mumble about how I might be accused of stamping my own hand my pressing it against someone else’s stamp. I really have no idea what he was going on about, but I was certainly lapping up the attention. I love it when carnies talk to me!

And then he proceeded to tell every single motherfucker on that ride the same exact cautionary tale while Seri laughed at me. I almost couldn’t hear her over the sound of my heart SHATTERING.

The bad thing about rides like this is that it’s similar to a ferris wheel or the Octopus in that there is a lot of idle time while all of the other seats are being filled. So for a good five minutes, we were suspended in the air while the seats on the other side of the Cobra were filled. (Thank god I got to listen to a happy Seri sing “Nothing Compares 2 U” during this.) This took twice as long because he had to have his little conference with every fucking rider, warning them about fading hand stamps, after which the ride finally started, but almost in a slow-motion pace.

“This isn’t that bad!” Seri laughed, still happy, but I knew that this wasn’t right. The ride was going so slow that we could have pulled out a deck of cards and had a heated game of Spades going if I knew how to play Spades. The carny was standing next to the controls, looking up at all of us with the scariest smile on his face, like he was the Cheshire cat and we were a bunch of trapped mice. He was totally fucking with us.

Then he stopped the ride so our side was back down on the ground, just so he could fill two seats that he left empty.

“Are you fucking kidding me!?” I yelled, because I had pointed this out earlier to Seri, after he initially fastened everyone in on our side. I didn’t understand why he didn’t fill those seats when there were still people waiting in line. BUT WHAT DO I KNOW ABOUT BEING A CARNY. It wasn’t until these seats were filled that the ride kicked in on full throttle and suddenly Seri wasn’t singing anymore. It was all “OMG ERIN!!!” from here on out, no melody, no joy. Her throwing up on me was a legitimate concern.

Imagine you’re on a ski lift in outer space and then it detaches because some asshole Jedi engineer was drunk when he designed it, and suddenly you find yourself in a manic spiraling free fall into a black hole; you’re spinning so fast that your eyes literally cannot keep up with the direction your head is being pushed and maybe you’re mistaken but it really sounds like your brain is sloshing against your skull.

Yet somehow, this is fun and you’re laughing! (Maybe I’m speaking for myself, because I’m pretty sure Seri was crying and on the precipice of unconsciousness.) And then once the ride stops and you’re put out of your misery, you’re stuck suspended in limbo while the fucking carny lets off everyone on the other side, even though you’ve been sitting on this ride longer than anyone else. And even though Seri’s brain is oozing out of her nose, she still finds a way to sing along to MILEY FUCKING CYRUS and you start to wonder if you could survive the 20 foot fall onto the cement, a/k/a Step 2 of the Cobra Escape Plan.

Meanwhile, Pete was standing at the fence, this totally appalled look on his face as he watched the carny stop and chat with every person after unlatching their safety bar, and then replacing them with new riders who got the Hand Stamp Mission Statement while we were still suspended in miserable vertigo. And then the carny walked over and warned Pete and Henry about the hand stamps, too.

Henry totally didn’t care about our anguish, though. I might be mistaken, but I thought I saw him palm the carny $10, a condom and 2 Slim Jims to keep us up there longer.

Finally, we were released from our pseudo-cages. “You’re horrible!” I yelled at him, and he acted all taken aback, like no one had ever thought a carny was horrible before.

Later, I approached him for a picture. “I just want to always remember this day,” I lied to him as he posed. “You’re totally the best carny here.”

He laughed and said something as he walked away, but I don’t speak carny so all I heard was, “I’mma hog tie you on a mound of empty Skoal cans behind the toilets and poke you with my yucky-stick.”

After that, we walked over to where some amazing animal show was going to happen in ten minutes, which was really 35 minutes, with reminders every 5 minutes that the show was starting in 10 minutes. Circus time is really confusing.

Thank god they deployed a vendor from the back to carry around a tray of $2 sno-cones.

I didn’t really want a sno-cone, but Henry wouldn’t get me anything to drink because “The show is going to start in 10 circus minutes!” and the invisible announcer kept saying, “GETCHUR SNO-CONES BEFORE THE SHOW! NOTHING LIKE A NICE, ICY COLD SNO-CONE TO MAKE YOU FORGET THAT WE KEEP OUR ANIMALS IN CRAMPED CAGES! YOU’RE TOTALLY PAYING $2 FOR ICE MADE FROM HOSE WATER!”

“I want one!” I whined to Henry, who made the biggest deal about not wanting to buy me a sno-cone after EVERYTHING I DO FOR HIM. (Or maybe it was more like, “After everything I’ve done to him.”) But he bought one for Chooch, WTF. So all the kids got a sno-cone, and then Pete bought one for Seri so Henry knew at this point he would never hear the end of it, and managed to fish $2 out from all the hemorrhoid wipe and individually-wrapped prunes in his pockets, but now I didn’t want one anymore.

Then the fucking vendor was right behind the bleachers we were sitting on, looking at me expectantly while Henry and Seri were saying, “JUST GET A SNO-CONE OMG” and I felt so pressured so I took a goddamn sno-cone, ate approximately 5 and a half bites and then shoved it into Henry’s hands.

I wanted a blue one, not a red one.

And of course after I bought a red one, the vendor came back out with MORE BLUE ONES. I made some kind of loud, childish remark about this, causing the lady in front of me to turn around and laugh. I WAS NOT LAUGHING.

You’d think sno-cones would have been enough to placate the kids and keep them planted on the bales of hay on which they sat far, far away from us, but no. All three kept running back and climbing up the bleachers, crying about all of the other things they wanted, like bags of peanuts and cotton candy, and fuck that vendor for putting us in the Bad Parent position. Meanwhile, this goddamn show only ended up being 10 minutes long, and everyone had already devoured their treats before it even started. Way to go, vendor.

I have never seen sno-cones inspire so many tears and bad moods before. (Fine, some of those tears and probably all of the bad moods were mine.) I guess we’ll never learn.

Thank god this guy was there preaching about his make believe religion before the show.

“Go sit down. Go away.” I think sometimes the children forget that we come to these places for us, not them. God, get over yourselves, kids!

The vendor is multi-functional.

Oh, I hated this guy so bad. I love tigers (and lions!) so much but it is so excruciating to watch them get slapped around for a bunch of hicks at the county fair. Henry and I were placing bets on which tiger was going to be the one to mutilate this asshole’s Jugular. Henry said it’s totally going to be the liger.

Fuck you, Wambold.

(However, ever since that day, I have been threatening to send Marcy there every time she’s mean to me. Which is everyday. I think she’s called my bluff.)