Corey found our parent’s wedding album and texted me pictures from it this afternoon, which I can honestly say has been the high point of this week. Even though I was 5 when I made my debut as a flower girl (my dress had tiny bells sewn into the ruffles, you guys! and my shoes were Candies!), I have only vague recollections of this day at best. (Because clearly all I cared about was what I was wearing.)

Thank god my mom’s facial expressions and vacant eyes fill in the gaps. I feel like she FOR SURE popped some pills that morning.

Fuck, they hated me, lol.

My Pappap looks PISSED. My grandma is totally hissing, “SMILE. THE NEIGHBORS MIGHT BE WATCHING.

” Susie knows her dress is the shit (seriously, Wendy and I both agreed that we would totally wear that dress right now in 2014). I’m too afraid to look at Sharon. She looks like she’s casting a spell and I don’t like it.

BUT LOOK HOW HAPPY I AM!

I think someone didn’t want to get hitched that day.

(Also, thats my great-grandma in the rocking chair. She was from Yugoslavia and didn’t speak English*. Also, she scared me.)

A poster for REGRET.

****

I honestly cannot stop laughing at these. I mean, I’m thankful they DID get married because otherwise, I wouldn’t have my brothers, but Jesus Christ their marriage was loveless before it even began! They make Henry and me look like a cover of a romance novel.

*ED.NOTE: I’ve just been informed by a family member that my great-grandma was very kind and DID speak English, so what we have here is an example of another lie my mom told me when I was a child.

This is going to be a little strange and I have a feeling my fingers might try to recoil from the keyboard, but today, instead of my usual Henry emasculation session, I’m going to reflect on all the things he’s done this week that were nice (read: obedient). Because if there is one thing I was cruelly reminded of this week, a little appreciation goes a long way.

1. Diligent Greeting Card Partner

For some reason, we’ve been selling an unusually large amount of our serial killer valentines, pretty much right after I had a mini temper tantrum about how we weren’t selling anything and I felt like an asshole every time I made feeble attempts to promote them on Facebook. I HATE being pushy about things. Anyway, things picked up for us out of nowhere and Henry has been working hard to make sure orders get filled at a speedy pace. (I sort of help—I handle all the customer service shit because I spell better and am just more personable via typed correspondence in general than Mr. Types Like a Caveman Talks.) Yesterday, I put on England Dan & John Ford Coley (I know, right) and kept him company while he slaved away with his precious paper cutter and printer that I still don’t know how to use, but then he was all, “While you’re sitting there…” and made me start packaging orders, then had the audacity to tell me I wasn’t sealing the cellophane card protectors properly, WTF!?

Wait, this was supposed to be about how nice Henry has been this week. Shit.

2. The Couple that Works Out Together Kills Each Other

You know how I’ve been on this mortality kick since last week? No? Well, now you do. One of the things that I’ve been internalizing is the gnawing notion that Henry won’t always be around. I mean, I might die first, even. But still, I decided it couldn’t hurt to get a little preventative up in here, and somehow got him to promise me that he would start exercising. (It might have had something to do with the fact that I was crying when I asked him because: OMG DON’T DIE.) So Tuesday night after work, we changed into sweatpants (OMG Henry in elastic-ankled sweatpants, you guys) and I put on the easiest Jillian Michaels DVD in my collection (30 Day Shred, y’all). I was even nice enough to let him start on Level 1, which is as basic as one gets in a workout video. I mean, the warmup is all windmills and jumping jacks, which I learned that Henry literally cannot do, and then hip circles which was HILARIOUS to watch him reenact. Anyway, jumping jacks came up again in the first cardio circuit and I kept catching him in my periphery, all flopping around, arms not syncing up with his legs, and I lost it. I started laughing so motherfucking hard that I peed a little. I can’t lie to you guys. I can’t and I won’t. I peed and kept on exercising because I was afraid if I paused it long enough to change, Henry would escape to Hot Naybor Chris’s basement.

“If you don’t stop laughing at me, I’m going to quit!” he yelled, and I laughed even harder. And then every time Jillian would say, “OK ladies” I would pee just a tiny bit more.

I could hear Henry huffing and puffing during one of the strength segments, so I offered up some advice. “Sometimes when it gets too hard, I draw strength from Dance Gavin Dance,” I said, pointing at my DGD painting behind the TV.

“Fuck you,” he panted.

And then, during some shadowboxing, I said, “I used to picture Christina’s face every time I would throw a punch.”

“That’s great. I’m picturing your face,” he wheezed.

I was going to allow him to switch to some good old-fashioned Bodies In Motion last night, which at least has a male instructor (Gilad 4 lyfe, yo), and is also way easier than any of Jillian’s workouts, but Henry was all, “No. You already made me start this one so let’s go.” So last night, we did 30 Day Shred again. (I just want you to know that I am doing these with him in addition to my usual morning workouts, because I’m a wonderful girlfriend who wants to see her boyfriend succeed…I think that’s how I rehearsed that sentiment.) This time, Chooch was home (he was at his aunt Kelly’s the night before and missed out on his father exercising for the first time since THE SERVICE) and when it was time to do hip circles, I screamed, “CHOOCH LOOK HOW SEXY DADDY!” and Chooch and I cracked the fuck up, which made Henry bristle his mustache (sorry guy, that doesn’t count as aerobics) and threaten again to throw in the proverbial towel.

Do you know how hard it is for me not to grab my phone and post an Instavid of hopping Hank doing jumping jacks? Exercising my restraint — now THAT is a workout.

3.  Mustacioed Sounding Board

So, the Grammy’s just happened last Sunday and you might be surprised to know that I did actually watch because I really do like some mainstream garbage every now and then. My favorite parts were when neither Taylor Swift nor Katy Perry won in their categories, but both got faked-out because the albums that DID win both started with the same letter as theirs and I detected a split-second of wile euphoria in their eyes before it registered that it was “Random Access Memories” not “Red,” “Royals” and not “Roar” that had actually won.

Anyway, this prompted one of my long-winded signature late-night diatribes, this one about how fucked up it is that we live in a world where Katy Perry even gets NOMINATED for a Grammy, and Henry just laid there in bed, agreeing with my hysteria and letting me get it all out of my system.

I’m pretty sure he secretly likes her “music,” so I appreciated that he indulged my inherent need to be up-in-arms over essentially nothing.

(P.S. Kendrick Lamar > Macklemore, but that wedding thing was pretty amazing.)

4.  All the Right Words

I’ve been having a pretty shitty week. But luckily, it’s just work that’s making it shitty so at least it’s something that I can work on changing. Every day though I have been sending Henry SOS texts from the confines of my office-thing, recounting all the times I’ve been brought to tears by various aspects of my job.

So today, when he dropped me off for work, he called after me, “Try not to cry today!” But it was half past “sweet encouragement” more toward “sarcastic chide”, and it made me laugh so hard. Like, how ridiculous. Why the fuck am I wasting my precious eyeball juice on this shit when I could be christening my music collection with it? There are so many more worthy causes to be crying over than what I do here every day, so thank you Henry for accidentally waking me the fuck up.

****

Four things is pretty good, right!? Can I go to Heaven now?

*(I was going to call this post “Henry’s Bone” but that seemed a little weird.)

After I made Chooch pose for pictures on Sunday, he stripped down to his underwear and dress shirt, and that is how he remained for the rest of the day; his own version of Risky Business, I guess.

Friday night after work, we went out to eat with our friends the Handa’s. The back of Chooch’s fortune taught him how to say “drunk, tipsy” in Chinese, which is good because now the next time he publicly calls Henry a drunk, maybe no one will understand him.

And then this princess, I can’t even. Can she please just live forever?

***

I actually had real things to say but you know: work. This week has not been great. Hope yours is better!

I was at work last night when Chiodos sent out an email with a video for a song off their upcoming album. I listened to it immediately and it was the summer of 2007 again (in all the best ways) and, please don’t think I’m turning soft and overly-sentimental, but I swear it felt like I was being put back together. ESPECIALLY WHEN CRAIG OWENS SCREAMS.

I actually loved their last album, the one with Brandon Bolmer. I will love Chiodos no matter how they have at the helm, but to have Craig back with them, oh you guys. I am so stoked to buy this album!

After work, I made Henry listen to it. “I started crying when I first listened to it,” I confided in him.

“Why?” he sighed, used to this by now.

“BECAUSE IT’S JUST SO GOOOOOOOOOOOOD,” my inner teenager wailed. And it was just what I needed, too. It makes me want to start doing the painting/short story thing I used to do what seems like another lifetime ago. I guess it really was another lifetime ago. My job has really snuffed out whatever iota of creativity I once had. Oh, Catch-22, you fucking hairy cocksucker, you.

You’ve broken everything I love and I can’t wait to be myself again.

— Yes. This. SO MUCH OF THIS RIGHT HERE.

In related news, remember when Henry the Miser wouldn’t buy me a Chiodos hoodie so I had to make my own?

Henry wouldn’t take us anywhere yesterday because oh no, snow. The big difference between Henry and me, aside from that one us doesn’t have a weener (I know, that could be either of us), is that Henry is fine doing NOTHING all the livelong day. Not me. I need action. I suffer enough throughout the week to feel pretty damn entitled when the weekend rolls around. And I was really looking forward to this particular one! I had a breakfast date with Wendy and Jeannie, Chooch’s piano lesson, Kristy was going to come over Saturday night to teach me how to drink beer without looking like I had just let someone ejaculate in my mouth for the first time, and then we were going to go to a different skating rink on Sunday. BUT THEN: SNOW.

I could only take so much before I went to Chooch’s room, threw together a random outfit, and said, “PUT THIS ON, WE’RE GOING OUTSIDE FOR A PHOTO SHOOT” and he was all, “NO I HATE YOU” but then I bribed/threatened him and of course I got my way in the end.

See? He’s fine! Totally content!

I asked him not to smile for this so please don’t call Child Services on me, thanks. (You know who you are.)

I know I probably shouldn’t say this about my own kid, but he reminds me so much of a young Jeffrey Dahmer in this photo, I can’t stand it. But then my friend Brandy called him “Darling Valentine” on Instagram, so let’s just go with that.

OK, he may have been shivering here. But we were only outside for < 10 minutes. I’m not that mean.

Henry was in the basement sanding a jewelry cabinet for me, so he actually had no idea this was going on. I guess what I’m saying is: we were unsupervised and no one got frostbite or cannibalized the other. In my world, we call that success.

Aside from that, this weekend was pretty worthless. Oh well, at least Katy Perry didn’t win a Grammy last night.

The snow started early yesterday morning. I sat around, playing music and impatiently watching Henry make the non compos cards we just sold, when I noticed that he was using an unfamiliar paper cutter.

“Is that a new paper cutter?” I asked.

“Kind of. I’ve had it since last June. I bought it at JoAnn’s. It was on sale: 40% off of $90. Plus I had a 20% off coupon!” Henry joyfully exclaimed.

TMI, Henry. TMI.

He finished making the cards and I walked them to the Brookline post office.

I haven’t been out of the since then because this fucking SNOW SUCKS and has taken upon itself to cancel all of my plans and I am so goddamn bored. Sitting around doing nothing goes against everything I stand for.

After Willie’s death sent me spiraling into this stupid funk, I made the executive decision that it was time to start art therapy again. And boy, this would have been a great weekend to paint, but I don’t have any stupid canvas! SNOW, YOU ARE KILLING ME.

We were going to go roller skating today, the one thing I had to look forward to, but it’s snowing again and cars are sliding all over the road in front of my house and Henry keeps showing me goddamn weather maps on his phone and I’m about to flip my shit.

“All I wanted to do was go rollerskating this weekend and instead I’m stuck in the house where THREE OF MY CATS DIED!!!!!

” I wailed.

“Oh that’s nice,” Henry said brusquely. “Because the way I see it, I’m stuck in the house with my best friend* and son.” Oh, OK martyr.

*(I confirmed that he actually was referring to me, surprisingly, and not his paper cutter.)

I feel like the top of my head is going to pop off.

Henry just told me he loves me. Ok, great, BUT IT IS STILL SNOWING.

Chooch and I were off from our respective school/work places on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. So we made plans to meet up with Kara, Harland and Baby Theo at Cannon Coffee. Chooch loves Cannon Coffee, for some reason. It might be the tattooed barista who always tries to pressure him into trying some exotic form of hot chocolate, but in the end he always just giggles nervously and says, “No. Just regular.”

Things started out great! Harland and Chooch huddled around a phone while Theo sat quietly in Kara’s lap, allowing Kara and me to have real life conversations.

Considering we were there for two hours, they were pretty well-behaved.

But then the Storm Trooper happened. Harland noticed that there was a drawing of one hanging up behind the counter.

“Chooch, look at the Storm Trooper!” Harland called. So Chooch walked over and together they stood in Storm Trooper reverie.

“You want this?” the barista asked, handing Chooch another sketch of a Storm Trooper she had behind the counter. Chooch accepted it, which irked Harland, and rightfully so, IMO.

He asked Chooch for it and I made him hand it over. It was clear that it meant more to Harland, anyway. Chooch was all, “Ugh fine” and they both went back to their respective iPhone games, abandoning the sketch on the table between me and Kara.

But then right as we were all bundling up to leave, Chooch hovered over the sketch on the table and mumbled, “I want this.”

I reminded him that we gave it to Harland, so Chooch put his head down on the table and sighed heavily.

Harland, aware of what was transpiring, said, “But I want it too” and then laid in a sullen heap on the floor.

“But she gave it to me,” Chooch sighed.

“But only because Harland was the one who saw the other sketch first,” I pointed out.

This volleyed back and forth for a few minutes, this totally mild tug-of-war over some dumb sketch on the back of a Brookline community Christmas announcement. No raised voices. No tears. Just two kids quietly wanting the same thing while Theo silently judged them from Kara’s arms. It was the weirdest “fight” ever.

In the end, I told Chooch he wouldn’t be able to play Minecraft if he didn’t just give the damn drawing to Harland. That brought him back to reality real quick-like, and we all left Cannon Coffee as friends.

***

Later that day, Kara texted me to say that Harland was still carrying the drawing around like it was made of diamonds and gold, and that her husband was going to draw a Storm Trooper for both of them. In the meantime, she scanned the barista’s Storm Trooper and emailed it to Chooch, who was like, “Oh OK. Cool.” Totally blasé, LIKE I KNEW HE WOULD BE! That’s why I was so adamant about him giving it to Harland; I knew if Chooch brought it home, he would lose interest as soon as he logged into Minecraft.

Good god, thanks for the turbulence, Storm Trooper. It’s pretty funny though that in the eight years Kara and I have been friends, this was the biggest “conflict” we’ve ever had!

I think having Henry’s mom and Chooch around yesterday when I found Willie dead (RIP) helped me, because, you know, community grieving and all that. But today, Chooch was back to school and Judy was back at her place, so it was just me and Marcy. And it was pretty fucking depressing. Soul-suckingly so. Watching Marcy skulk around, sniffing around the empty cat carrier, poking her head around corners, it was too much. Henry doesn’t think she actually really cares that her daughter is dead. I mean, we kind of chuckled about it last night, how Marcy got her wish, Marcy-Hater-Of-All is the last cat standing. But goddamn motherfucking shit, the house is so empty. What will I do when she’s gone too? Her presence is almost larger than life. She is a force. Even the way she barrels into our bedroom, practically hurtling herself at the half-shut door, is so bombastic. What will the house be like without her, I can’t even imagine.

So then, after running back into the house twice to re-hug Marcy, I was walking to the trolley and crying, which is awesome to do in January when it’s 7 degrees outside. Crying in 7 degree weather. But then on the trolley platform, some guy started talking to me and that was pretty nice, a distraction, human contact. And I realized, for as much as I’m like, “DON’T TALK TO ME STRANGERS!” that basic connection with another person is what I was subconsciously craving at that moment. Please, pick my heart up off the frozen trolley platform and speak words to me.

My new friend’s name is (Not) Jonny (Craig) and he was pretty normal. I mean, he was wearing a Steelers Santa hat and broken glasses held together by masking tape like you’d do if you were going trick-or-treating as “Post-Political Fight with Erin” Henry.

We talked about riveting things, such as taking the wrong trolley and what we do for a living. (He just got a job at Meat & Potatoes, and I said, “Oh cool, I had disgusting absinthe there once.”)

And then we parted ways at the Wood Street trolley stop because he wanted to go to McDonald’s and I had to try and cross the street without getting sideswiped by a bus. He seemed very genuine when he told me to have a good day at work and I almost fucking lost it right there in that cold concrete holding cell for commuters because someone was being so nice to me and now I was all alone with my morbid thoughts again.

I can’t do that whole wallowing thing right now, I just can’t. So…happy thoughts! Here are things that are making me happy this week, because maybe looking at these pictures and typing out positive words will seep into my fingertips and brain-fuck me with positivity.

Dino Ring holder, I’m still way into you. I gave one to Wendy, and it was really hard to part with!  But this one, this stegosaurus (thanks Andrea and Kendahl for the dino name hook-up!) is mine all mine. I love him so.

You know Pee Wee’s Big Adventure is one of my Top 5 favorite movies, right? I mean, it’s basically the only movie I ever quote. My friend Kristy bought me this Large Marge sticker at one of the conventions she went to, because she is awesome and gets it. She really gets it. (Also, for my 31st birthday, she presented me with a framed still of one of Pee Wee’s scenes in Back to the Beach, which is also in my Top 5 favorite movies.) Having awesome people in my life is another thing to be happy about this week. Thank you, Awesome People!

Henry thinking he can suddenly play the keyboard after sitting in on one of Chooch’s lessons is hilarious.

Getting good feedback on Etsy makes me happy! non compos cards, helping people be jerks to their friends since 2006.

Having Monday off (thanks MLKJr!!) with Chooch and Marcy made me happy, but also a little delirious. This picture was our SOS for Henry to get his ass home from work. We can only take care of one another for so long.

<3 <3 <3 <3 Obviously. (Henry criticized me for always making the same face in pictures. I can’t help it!)

I got my special edition 20th anniversary Warped Tour ticket (glad I held off on buying mine when I bought Chooch’s in December, because these were just released)! THAT makes me happy. But then I start thinking of all the dire situations that could arise between now and July 15th and whoa, here comes the panic again.

But then I look at this text message from Henry and I’m laughing again. Ha-ha-ha.

Tell me what things are making you happy this week. LET US ALL HAVE A HAPPY RAINBOW-SQUIRTING FEST WITH EACH OTHER. FUN THURSDAY HAPPENING TIMES! MAYBE START CLAPPING FOR NO REASON?

I’m going to have my fifth cup of coffee right now, because at least when I’m making coffee, I’m doing something and when I’m doing something I’m not hearing a funeral dirge in my shattered mind.

The only time I ever saw my dad cry was when he had to have his beloved Siberian Husky, Blitz, put to sleep. I must have been around 10 or so when this happened, and it was hard for me too, sure; but this dog had been my dad’s bro since before he met my mom, back in his storied bachelor years.

He and Blitz were a packaged deal.

Our German Shepherd, Rama, was only a few years old when this happened. I watched my dad completely shut down and close the door on Rama. I mean, he wasn’t like, abusing him or anything. But it was almost like Rama didn’t exist to him. I didn’t understand. How could someone just shut out an animal like that? Especially one like Rama. Rama was fucking awesome.

This morning, Marcy’s daughter Willie passed away. She would have been 14 right before St. Patrick’s Day. Willie had started acting lethargic and weird last week, her breathing was getting labored. Henry took her to the vet and he re-hydrated her and gave her some shots, but said that he was pretty certain she either had cancer or fluid in her lungs. It always goes back to cancer, doesn’t it? She had lost a lot of weight and he wasn’t sure how she would respond to further testing, because just the process of taking her out of the house had her completely wigged out. Willie was kind of like the recluse of our cat family.

In fact, it’s not uncommon for someone I have known for years to say, “Wait, you have another cat?” She spent a huge portion of her life hiding in the basement from people. Or, sometimes, late at night I’d be watching TV and Willie would come scurrying out from behind the couch.

She was very skittish. She also like to pee on things. An example? The first time Andrea ever visited us from California, she set her purse on the floor and Willie promptly peed on it.

Andrea was a good sport about it. “Thank god it’s vinyl,” she laughed.

I wasn’t supposed to keep her. She was from Marcy’s first litter of kittens in 2000. So was Don. I knew right away that I was keeping Don, even if it meant officially pushing me over that fine line between “cat connoisseur” and “crazy cat lady.” Willie had been promised to a co-worker of my then-friend Keri. (I say “then-friend” because we are no longer friends.) But one day I came home and found Don and Willie snuggling together on my bed and I was like, “OMG I can’t separate them! They have such a strong sibling bond!” So I called Keri and told her I couldn’t give Willie to her friend. (No, this is not why we’re not friends anymore.)

Funny thing about that sibling bond, though. Don and Willie outgrew that pretty fast and spent most of their lives totally ignoring each other. Or gnawing at each others’ throats in murderous fits while Marcy glowered from her perch above.

The last several years, though, Willie had really started to come out of her shell. I mean, she wasn’t the friendliest cat, but she was super fun to tease. She also had a nasty temper–you never knew when she would strike. She attacked Henry and Blake years ago and Henry has tread lightly ever since. One night, I was doing this really high-pitched meow and she went hysterical, growling and attacking me. I had to wrap myself in a blanket and hide behind Marcy for protection.

You can’t tell so much from these photos, but she had really beautifully-colored fur. There were salmon-hued patches, almost pink. And the texture was wiry. We would always say things like, “She’s so beautiful. Too bad she has zero personality.” God, now I’m crying again. Why did we say things like that?

She is the third cat I’ve lost as an adult. The third in the last 2 years. The third from the Original Four. My fur-family is diminishing, and I can’t fucking bear it. This is the most traumatic countdown of all time.

Henry’s mom Judy inexplicably had formed some strange attachment to Willie over the last several months. (Though she refuses to use female pronouns when talking about her.)  Judy has called Henry every day since Willie fell ill, wanting to know how she was doing. She’s been staying us with us for the last several days because Chooch hasn’t had school, so she was there this morning when I discovered a freshly deceased Willie in the basement. Judy was still sleeping and I was freaking out. So I did what any mature adult would do and shook awake my 7-year-old son and cried into his moppy hair.

“Don’t tell Grandma,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “It’ll upset her.”

So what does he do? He goes downstairs and as soon as Judy wakes up on the couch, he let her tell us about what a terrible night she had before blurting out, “Well, Willie’s dead.”

And Judy burst into tears. I didn’t expect that. I was sitting at the dining room table, hugging Marcy, crying into her fur as she struggled to escape my grasp.

“I pray for you everyday, Erin,” Judy sobbed. “Because I just don’t know what’s going to happen to you when THAT one goes.” She wagged a finger at Marcy. Hearing her say that made me hug Marcy so hard her eyes started to bulge.

When I was upstairs getting ready for work, I overheard Judy on the phone, telling Henry’s sister Kelly that Willie had died. She started to get herself all worked up again, when Chooch sagely piped up from his station at the computer, “Just remember the fun times, Grandma.”

Later, the still-sore subject of Speck came up and Chooch began sobbing. And then Judy glanced over at the cat carrier and said, “The last time I saw Willie alive, she was in that cage” and then began crying again. And then I started to cry. It just felt like the house was brimming with Grim Reapers and I was suffocating. Meanwhile, Marcy just sat there glaring at us, probably thinking we were fucking nuts.

I just couldn’t wait to get out of that house today. The emotions are percolating and I feel like my top is going to blow. I cried this morning, but I feel like The Big Cry is about to happen and I’m chewing on the inside of my cheeks because I don’t want to lose it at work. I just can’t deal with mortality. WHO CAN? I loved my damn cats more than any human (but comparable to Chooch, I guess, ha-ha) and every time one of them dies, another piece of my heart petrifies.

And now I understand why my dad never got another pet ever again after Blitz. I hope that one day, unlike my dad, I will be able to open my heart up to a new pet. But right now, I look at Marcy and I am crippled by panic. I know she can’t live forever and that I should continue to just enjoy the rest of the time I have with her without darkening it with morbid thoughts. But you know, The Panic. It’s there.

RIP, Willie. You were kind of an asshole, but we still loved you anyway. Marcy probably did, too.

If you need me, I’ll just be under a blanket, dwelling on the fact THAT EVERYONE DIES.

The funny thing about the Mattress Factory is that it’s been around since the 80s but I never knew about it until I was in college in the 2000s and was determined to milk my Pitt ID for everything it was worth. Which turned out to be free rides on the trolley and free admission to the Mattress Factory. (Or maybe it was just discounted? Who has time to remember this shit, anyway.) What I do remember is going to their website and being all, “HOLY FUCK THIS IS IN MY CITY?!” and then telling Janna about it and we went immediately. Or maybe we waited a few days. I don’t know. The point is that we eventually went and I have been obsessed with its industrial-spaced collection of confusing art ever since.

The first time I ever wrote about the Mattress Factory was on LiveJournal, back in 2005/2006. One of my LJ friends commented and said that they were surprised to see that Pittsburgh has something “so cultural.” I was pretty annoyed by this, because that antiquated view of Pittsburgh being all doom, gloom and steel-workery is pretty tiring. Yes, Pittsburgh has cultural thangs, ok? I mean, we also have a shit-ton of mullets and Yinzer Steelers fans, but we got them there myooseums and shit too. Leave us alone.

ANYWAY. I try to go at least once a year because the installations change so often. Corey and Janna are generally always on board for a trip to the good old MF, so that is what we did on Saturday. This time around, they were featuring some artists from Detroit, which I think is a sign that Bill and Jessi need to come visit sometime in the next several months so I take them to see art from their hometown brethren.

One of the rooms had fake trees with tin cans hanging from the fake boughs. Each tin can played something, like a conversation, a mariachi band, static. There were other people on the floor at the same time as us and I watched them choose two or three cans to press against their ears before moving on to the next room, but Janna, Corey, and I listened to every single one because you don’t pay $15 to half-ass it, OK?

Two other rooms on that floor also had audio stimulation, but our favorite was Diptyching:

An ominous “soundtrack” and an unsettling array of screams and  construction sounds challenge and warn the viewer of the impending calamity on the other side. Both entrance and exit doors are equipped with automatic door closures to create a one-way in and one-way out corralling experience.

Dude, that last line is true because we thought we were locked in and it was terrifying. Here is a snippet, although the first few frames are from one of the other installations, which basically was a room full of ticking clocks and the hypnotic shadows of swinging pendulums:

SQUIRTING BLOOD! YES!! NOW THAT IS SOME MOTHERFUCKING ART! We were all unanimous in that this was the best room ever. I wish it was my bedroom, actually.

Another installation we loved was called Cured. Large chunks of car parts coated in coarse salt were suspended from the ceiling by meat hooks. It was fucking horrific.

I loved it.

The mirrored polka dot room is a permanent installation and thank god for that because it makes me so giddy every time. We also laughed because we always seem to wind up in shoe booties when we’re together and by always I mean Saturday and also that day in September when we visited the Palace of Gold.

Awkward Elevator. (Not actually an installation, just real life.)

OMG this room in the basement, I can’t even. I still haven’t bothered to read about the point of it because DINOSAUR HATS.

We decided that we need a group photo with all the weird people-things in the back of the room, so instead of doing what normal, socially-functioning humans would do and ask one of the other Mattress Factory patrons to assist, we lurked around like complete creeps until we were alone in the room and then struggled with the timer function on our iPhones, only to have to abruptly stop and whistle into the rafters with our sweaty hands clasped behind our shady backs.

You know how it is.

Before leaving to check out the two annexes (yes, there are TWO additional buildings now!), we stopped in the gift shop so I could awkwardly say hello to my Instagram friend Sam who works there. We actually became Instagram friends because she liked one of my pictures from the Mattress Factory a few years ago and was all, “Hello, I work there!” and I thought that was just too fucking cool. And of course, she is as cool as you would expect someone who works at the MF to be. (I’m not being sarcastic. She’s all vintage-y and makes cool art-things. I like her.)

We had to walk down an alley to the new building, which was three floors of rooms totally webbed-out with black string. It was intricate, claustrophobic, decrepit, wonderful. It gave me that Alice in Wonderland sensation  that so often happens when I’m at the Mattress Factory. This dreamy sense of “Is this real life?” has a way of sneaking up on you and for the next several hours you’re pulled under into this giddy, sometimes terrifying, world that Drake should rap about on his next album for no reason other than I love Drake.

We weren’t allowed to take photos in the last building, but there was this film called Honey Baby playing in one of the rooms,  so we sat down to watch. At first, I was like, “Oh, OK. It’s a baby rolling around in utero. Makes sense.” But then the baby twisted around and in my head, I’m shouting, “HOLY FUCK THOSE ARE SOME MIGHTY DEVELOPED GENITALS.” Turns out, it was an adult man rolling around in honey, in slow motion, with this foreboding and totally stressful THUMP-THUMP-THUMPing music going on and it gave me flashbacks to the time I rented “964 Pinocchio” and wanted to float out of my skin, never to return.  And this just kept going on and on, this man contorting and twisting his groin toward the camera in case we forgot he was a man, and I couldn’t tell if he was upside down or if I was upside down and HOW WAS THIS POSSIBLY GOING TO END?! I wasn’t about to stick around to find out if a bucket of honey was going to drop on us, so I said, “I can’t watch this anymore” and walked away. Janna was like, “But I’m enjoying this very much. :(” So, I guess if you want to know how it ends, you’ll have to come to Pittsburgh.

I really need to just take the plunge and buy a membership. I mean, it’s about time.

****

For some reason, Pittsburgh has got A LOT OF LOVE lately from various media outlets (OMG maybe because it’s actually a cool city?!). Mostly food-related bullshit, but there have also been the obligatory “lists” floating around, which of course will mention the Warhol Museum and the incline, which my friend Bill thought it was a house traveling along the side of the hill the first time he was visiting from Michigan. But I don’t always see any mention of the Mattress Factory, which is hands down my favorite art-type place to go up in this piece. So if you are planning a visit to the Gloomy Steel City at some point, please make sure you visit the Mattress Factory. It is full of weird fucking shit that might make you scream, “HOW IS THIS ART!?” but then you cock your head a different angle and see it in a completely different way. Or sometimes you still see it as bullshit but hey, at least you’re at an art museum thing and not blowing your money on lapdances like usual. Good job!

I mean,  it’s not for everyone, though. Like, one time Henry went and said, “That was fucking stupid” and then never went back again.

OK, I have to confess to something: one of the reasons we haven’t been going roller skating anymore is because I hated how Henry became Man of the Motherfucking Hour as soon as we walked into that damn roller rink, and also the new owners irritate me. They’re super-religious (Sunday afternoon sessions are now primarily sound-tracked by Contemporary Christian music; no, just no) and it’s almost like their Christlike eyes give them x-ray vision into the upside  down cross seared into the inside of my bottom lip. I don’t know, they just make me uncomfortable, OK? They took over the joint and EVERYTHING CHANGED. I hate change.

But I love to roller skate, and there’s something about the suffocating winter months that make it almost feel like a necessity. Get me out of the fucking house!

Owner Wife took our admission tickets from us (it always seemed ridiculous to me that we buy tickets, walk two feet and then hand them over; what a waste of whatever admission tickets are made of) and I’m happy to report that she did not seem to remember us. Immediately, I spotted Paul, Henry’s Rink Ref Bromance, on the rink but he did not return my wave. I was pretty pissed off and Henry was like, “Well, you look a lot different now.” Um, I do? OH OK.

Henry had to lace my skates, just like old times. The last time I was there, it was sans Henry so I had to do it myself. It was really taxing and it’s a miracle I had any energy left to skate. A true ridiculous miracle.

I couldn’t wait to see Roller DJ! It’s been awhile so I thought maybe he would lift me up like a tiny dancer (I’m tiny in comparison to him, OK?!) and then we would do some disgusting Saturday Night Fever on Wheels bullshit because that’s real life. But halfway to his DJ Cave, I skidded to a halt because it wasn’t him! It was the dumb owner, Jim, who apparently has been reborn as DJ Jimmy Jamz.

WHAT?

There’s something about that guy that makes me uncomfortable. Every interaction I’ve had with him has basically involved him telling me what to do re: buying my own skates. And if there’s one thing I hate besides Alaska, it’s being told what to do! DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO.

I’m going to have shirts made. FUCK.

Anyway, since that guy was DJing, I made Chooch request songs for me and he was happy to accommodate my whims for once. First, Chooch requested Paramore and was excited to skate-tromp back over to me on the rink to tell me, breathlessly, that, “HE’S GOING TO PLAY THE NEW ONE!” And so I got to have a brief 3-minute window of joy, skating to “Ain’t It Fun” (which is a fantastic skate song, you guys, and for a moment I felt like I was back in my prime, wearing my hot pink-wheeled white skates and breezing around Spinning Wheels in one of my many puffy-painted sweatshirts and leggings). But then that song ended and we had to suffer through the second Katy Perry “song” IN THIRTY MINUTES because it was some dumb bitch’s 7th birthday song.

Do you know how many Katy Perry songs, total, we had to endure in the 3-hour session? FOUR. That is fucking outrageous for ONE SKATE SESSION. As my Twitter friend Dave said, “That’s a lot for one year, let alone one skate session.” All of the best people are my Twitter friends.

And then “DJ Jimmy Jamz” played some god awful Christina Perri song that sounded like she was covering Crystal Gale singing at a funeral in 1976. Totally bizarre and I actually sat down because I couldn’t bring myself to continue skating to such a weird ballad.

Mostly, the session was sound-tracked by the usual Top 40 nonsense (NO BLACK EYE PEAS! OH HOW I CHEERED!), and also, inexplicably, a Queen song and Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill.” I sent Chooch to request another song, but when he came back, he yelled over top of Demi Lovato, “HE SAID ONLY ONE REQUEST PER SESSION!”

But it’s OK for him to play FOUR KATY PERRY SONGS?! WHAT.A.MOTHER.FUCKER.

Roller DJ never would have turned anyone away!

So I told Henry he had to request a song for me.

“Why can’t you do it yourself?” he asked.

“Because I don’t want to talk to that guy. It goes against all of my principles.”

(I know, right? What principles? HAHA.)

Chooch was wearing his Bring Me the Horizon shirt and subsequently caught the eye of two older scene kids. I was really excited about that at first until I saw that one of them was wearing a Black Veil Brides shirt. Henry and I had a mild argument later because he said they were both girls but I swear to you that I saw the one with the undercut coming out of the men’s room. Plus, he looked like a boy.

So…..

I didn’t hate too many people there that day, although there was this one soccer mom who reminded me of one of the Catholic School Bitch-Moms. I think she forgot that she’s a mom and not Dorothy Hamill on roller skates, because she was doing these completely embarrassing turns around the rink where she would get down low and protrude her mom-jeaned ass. And then Fall Out Boy’s “Light ‘Em Up” came on and she pumping a fist in the air and singing along and all I could think of was, “You are the reason why I don’t like Fall Out Boy anymore, you stupid bitch.”

But again, she reminded me of one of the Catholic School Bitch-Moms so I MIGHT have been projecting.

She clipped me during 18+ skate and I was so fired up. Of course Henry defended her. “It was probably an accident,” he patronized. Fuck you, Soccer Mom Advocate! WHO’S SIDE ARE YOU ON?!

Aside from a quick beverage break in the snack room, Chooch skated the whole time! Well, also except for the two Ladies Only and 18+ skates. This made me happy. And just so you know, we’re not one of those families that skate with linked arms in some lame Family Values Troika. We pretty much all skate solo, catching up to each other when we have some snide remark to make about someone.

I hate the people that skate in groups, by the way. They make it really hard to pass them without turning it into some violent game of Red Rover on Wheels.

And you know what’s even worse? These fucking plastic walkers-on-wheels that kids who can’t skate use to keep their balance. I mean, that’s all well and good but not when there are approximately 10 of them on the rink at all times. And the rink refs don’t do jack shit there, so even a simple skate around the rink turns into some goddamn Olympic slalom bullshit.

And even worse than that? A kid in a motorized wheelchair. I mean, yay! That’s actually really awesome, seeing a kid getting to enjoy himself on the roller rink (actually, he was pretty expressionless so “enjoying himself” might just be a wild assumption), but all I could think about was how I REALLY did not want to be that motherfucker who crashed into the handicapped kid at the roller rink. I’m a pretty good skater, but let me tell you something: there was one pile-up I saw that day and it was caused by one of the Really Good Skaters. NO ONE IS ABOVE FALLING ON A ROLLER RINK.

There was this cute little ginger kid there. I think his name was Damien. He kept wanting to talk to Chooch and me, which obviously made me suspicious. He caught me right when I was about to take the floor for the 18+ skate and, with his face scrunched up in doubt, asked, “Are you sure you’re 18 or older?” GINGER KID, I LOVE YOU.

Anyway, here’s a video montage of Chooch doing the Limbo, with cameos by some Old Guy who was the grandfather of Damien, I guess, and that dumb Afro’d rink ref who’s too busy showboating to actually do his goddamn job):

Henry was surly because he wasn’t recognized. Also, that dumb motherfucker didn’t request a song for me. I guess it’s right up there with “proposing” and “having fun” on the Things Henry Can’t Do chart. Thanks, old man. I’ll remember that. You dumb motherfucker. (Also, I hated that bitch in the Little House on the Prairie braid.)

Today, I’m wearing a Silence the City Clothing t-shirt that says “Steer Your Own Path.” Chooch was eyeballing it and finally said, “I don’t get your shirt.”

“It just means, you shouldn’t always sit around and wait for things to happen,” I explained, which is one of my biggest weaknesses of being A Parent: “Explaining life lessons.”

Chooch looked unsatisfied with this explanation, so I forged on. “You know, like if we just sat around and waited for Daddy to be like ‘OMG guys let’s go do something fun!’, we’d spend our entire lives sitting in the house doing nothing, never going anywhere but school and work, because he would never say anything like that. That’s why I’m always the one finding fun things for us to do.”

Chooch considered this and then said, “Well, Daddy did say something like that once, I think. But it was just about going to the Laundromat.”

Chooch had his first lesson with his punk rock piano teacher this morning and it went really well, actually! We had been trying to find him a teacher for awhile now but no one would respond to us. Then Henry found this girl Cheryl’s ad on Craiglist and she said she’s played in various local punk bands and has a very alternative approach to teaching piano so I knew immediately she was the one.

And she is awesome. Everything I imagined! Plus she’s patient and Chooch seemed very comfortable around her (though he did giggle a lot).

I can’t wait to steal her from Chooch.

She asked him if there were any songs he really wanted to learn to play and he blurted out “Silent Night.” Henry and I looked at each, raising our eyebrows in a “WTF, since when?” manner. Cheryl was just like, “Oh. OK. We can learn that one eventually!”

Anyway, the main focus of today’s inaugural lesson was for her to gauge which style and approach would be best for him, and she said she was surprised at how fast he was picking up the basics (aside from me playing clarinet in middle school, none of us are musically inclined, so Henry and I were just as surprised; I was actually preparing for him to bomb). Apparently, she thinks Chooch has the ability to play music by ear.

I had no clue.

He started fiddling with his keyboard as soon as we came home and then asked, “What is Silent Night, anyway?”

Yeah. That’s what I thought.

*(Bradley Bell plays keyboard in Chiodos, for those who aren’t immersed in the scene.)

I know this might be hard to believe, but before Henry, there was another old man on the receiving end of my affections.

It was the summer of 1996 and I was on a Trafalgar tour of Italy with my aunt Sharon. She was the worst traveling companion because she always had to be the center of attention and would get snotty anytime someone on the tour had the gall to speak to me. Mostly, she would answer questions for me, which would make me rampant with teenage temper-flares and pout sessions. But on this trip, which would end up being our last trip together since I was soon to become a disgrace to the family (i.e. a high school drop out), I decided to branch out on my own.

In previous years, my grandparents used to come with us and after day two, I’d be clinging to my Pappap, scowling when I would have to sit next to Sharon on the tour bus. When Sharon and I started to take these trips without them, it was hell for me. I would spend a lot of time crying on the bus because she was just so mean to me sometimes, and would put me down in front of the other travelers. She’d go off and make new friends with the other adults while I would have to be content with being the silent tag-a-long. And the thing with Sharon is that she lived for flaunting the fact that she was a “seasoned pro” at these European vacations, and would butt into people’s conversations to tell them where to get the best pasta in Rome or the best leather deals in Florence. And she would do this thing, whenever the tour guide would share something that Sharon was already planning on including in her own tour book, she would close her eyes and nod her head knowingly, making her stupid fucking chandelier earrings tinkle with pretentiousness.

Oh my god, this is making me hate Sharon so bad.

My grandma’s brother Eddie and sister Donna were also on this particular trip with their respective spouses, which was awesome because I never really got to spend much time with them since my grandma got all weird a few years earlier about, oh I don’t know, having familial relations. The four of them had already booked the trip when Sharon found out and decided it would be fun to surprise them. It was great for me to have them along because it allowed me to have allies in the very certain case that Sharon would try and ostracize me as usual.

Since I was 17 this time around, I was a little more secure in myself, had less complacency when it came to Sharon running the show. So I branched out. (I had tried this, mostly without success, on the trip prior to this one. Sharon caused a few scenes, but that’s another chapter involving a guy named Udo from Austria.) While she would be taking naps in the room, I’d wander down to the lobby in hopes of stumbling into some other people from our tour. In Lugano, I ran into Anahit, an Armenian lady from our group who Sharon hated. Probably because she was wild, extremely well-preserved for her age, and loved to drink the vino in excess every night at dinner. Since she was a single traveler, she was paired up with another single, Jackie. Jackie was in her 50s, wore fanny packs, and bore an uncanny resemblance to Nathan Lane. Sharon didn’t think very highly of Jackie either (“She gets on my fucking nerves” is what she’d hiss every time Jackie would breeze past us to her seat on the bus),

Our evening stroll took us down to Lake Como, where vendors were in abundance and the atmosphere was pregnant with romance and drunk laughter. I know, writing those words is extremely cheesy and out-of-character for me; but the truth is that I remember it so vividly, wishing I was older and there with a man. Not my mom’s possessive older sister and busful of retirees.

While there, we ran into more people from our tour, one of whom was Stefan—a very handsome Australian with well-coiffed prematurely white hair. He was there with his two (less attractive) friends, David and Ted, who were absent from this lovely nighttime stroll. It was the first time on the trip that I had really been around him, and we wound up walking back to the hotel together, as everyone else had found themselves paired up. I was in a panic. What could I possibly say to this older man that wouldn’t make him think (nay, believe) that I was just an immature kid. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I’m sure at some point I said, “OMG I play tennis and love rap music! My bedroom has purple carpet!”

From that moment on, I had big plans for Stefan. I only wore my tightest shirts for the rest of the trip. During walking tours, I would try to weasel my way near him, find some excuse to talk to him. Stupid shit like, “Look what I bought today!” and the chance of it being something that didn’t reflect my age was about 1 in 1,000,000.

If you were to read my vacation journal, you would notice a suspicious lack of Stefan entries. This is mostly because that journal was passed around between Sharon and my aunts and uncles every day on the bus, wherein they would laugh at my exaggerations, which to me were fairly accurate depictions of my surroundings and the subsequent events of the trip.

(Events like: “August 15th, Milan: Sharon pointed out a zit on my chin in front of a group of people from our tour; I found a seat in the back of the bus and cried.”) The thing with my family, any family really, is the moment they catch a whiff of some blossoming crush, you better go out and buy the biggest Lady Gaga-approved hat to die beneath. However, my journal does learn me that at dinner that night, my Uncle Eddie withdrew a stack of Steelers trading cards from his shirt pocket and tried to exchange them with the waiter for bigger portions.

Near the very end of the vacation, we were on a day trip in Siena, during which Sharon and I had one of our signature rows. I used this as an excuse to ditch her and I sought out Stefan, who was with David and Ted. In my very dramatic nature, I filled them in on the horrors that is traveling with Sharon, told them how she was always trying to keep me down when all I wanted to do was make friends with everyone on the tour. I remember, all these years later, that I was wearing a sheer white tank, under which the slightest hint of my bra could be detected. I hoped Stefan would notice.

(I hadn’t yet learned the definition of “tacky.”)

(Or “SLUTTY,” apparently. Don’t worry—Henry is a ticketing slut patrolman; he makes sure I don’t leave the house with my vagina hanging out nowaways.)

Stefan and his friends took great delight in hearing my woes of Sharon and suggested that I fight her. We all laughed at this and I thought it was so amazing that I was just a kid, sharing an inside joke with these three men. Later, on the bus, Stefan made his way back to where Sharon and I were sitting to see if we were fighting yet. I laughed at this, probably with more gusto than it warranted, just to make Sharon question what was going on.

“Nothing,” I said, when I was able to talk again. “Just an inside joke.” My ego practically did a pole dance, it was so turned on to see Sharon feeling left out.

Later, on the bus, my Aunt Donna asked in her I’m-Going-Yell-Since-I’m-On-A-Submarine voice, “What’s that Australian’s name who had a birthday?”

“Ted,” I answered.

“Ken?”

“No, Ted.”

“Ten?!”

Sharon, unable to take anymore of this, hissed, “TED.”

“Oh!” Aunt Donna exclaimed. “Theodore! Now what about that handsome one up there with the white hair? That’s the one I like.”

Knowing the shade of my face was quickly on its way to matching the heat of a rolling boil, I mumbled, “Stefan.”

Loudly, real loud, she said, “Oh, STEFAN! I like the name, too!”

Meanwhile, Ted and David were sitting diagonally from us and were probably asking each other, “Why the fuck are these Yankee broads throwing our names around?”

This is why I never wanted anyone to know I was practically drawing up blueprints to find a way inside Stefan’s suitcase so I could go home with him and live a glorious life in Brisbane as his American concubine. Their mouths, they are loud. Every night at dinner, my Uncle Eddie would get all Heidi Fleiss and try to pawn me off on any waiter he deemed cute enough. This would send the rest of them into giddy histrionics, making them shout things like, “Oh, Erin, he’s a cute one! Look at his butt!” and drawing everyone’s attention to the young blond girl with the lobster-hued cheeks who was just trying to enjoy her caprese salad in peace.

The last day of the trip, everyone congregated in the lobby of the hotel in Rome, crying and hugging, promising to keep in touch. (No one ever does.) Some of the people had later flights, like Stefan, and didn’t make it down in time to say goodbye.

But Stefan did. He found me in the lobby, waiting for the airport shuttle, and came over to hug me goodbye. The tears were on their marks, getting ready and set to go, but I postponed the race in favor of allowing my hormones to throw a party against my pelvis because oh my GOD, I was in the arms of an older man.

I left Italy positive that I was in love with him.

***

When I found this photo, I was quick to point out to Henry that he wasn’t my first old man crush, and then proceeded to tell him all about Stefan.

“I think Sharon must have liked him too, because any time Stefan and I were together, Sharon would rush over with a reason to pull me away,” I said angrily, holding the picture of him adoringly.

“Or! Maybe she was pulling you away because you were only seventeen?” Henry hypothesized in that tone he uses when he thinks I’m stupid and that he knows everything.

“Oh, yeah. Or that.”

• Henry said something kind of sweet to me today! I had just finished the most recent episode of Warped Roadies (it’s about Warped Tour roadies, you guys, in case you couldn’t tell) and it was heartbreaking. They do this thing called Living the Dream where they bring a terminally ill kid to Warped Tour and give them the VIP treatment. Kind of like an alternative Make a Wish, I guess. Anyway, this 29-year-old girl with some type of Stage 5 cancer just wanted to go to one last Warped Tour, so it was arranged that she and her husband were going to go and get to hang out with her favorite band The Summer Set (Chooch’s #2 band!), but then she FUCKING DIED a few days before it came to her town, UGH WTF IS THIS WORLD WE LIVE IN, I HATE YOU. Her husband decided that he would still go, just to honor her wish, and Henry said he would have done the same thing! As long as a Jonny Craig meet n’ greet wasn’t included, which I think is reasonable. Can you imagine, Henry going to Warped Tour even if I was dead? That would be the ultimate symbol of his unwavering devotion. So today, I like Henry.
• I also just finished reading “The Fault In Our Stars” so I’m really on a FUCK CANCER kick lately.
• You know how that man got shot and killed at the movie theater the other day all because he was texting his kid? That scares the fucking shit out of me. That is why when there is a disgusting asshole who is sitting behind me on the trolley, performing a snot symphony with his nose, I choose to clench my teeth and stare out the window, looking for Jonny Craig’s face in a cloud to grant me serenity. And then when people gasp and say, “That’s unacceptable, I would have punched him in the face, why didn’t you punch him in the face?” I just laugh. Because my luck, he would go from expelling snot at my head to expelling a bullet at my head. And even though I complain about my face a lot, I think I would hate it even more if it was completely blown off.  I think about all of the times in the past I’ve run my mouth in public, like the time I got in a heated verbal altercation with some drunk asshole at the House of Blues in Cleveland;  I think about the time in the high school when Janna pleaded with me to stop shouting at people from the car because I was going to get my head shot off (it’s on video, these exact words), and how fucking lucky I am that nothing ever escalated to the point of a weapon being drawn.  So I will continue to sit quietly and be submissive in this fucked up world of guns and knee-jerk violence.
• Chooch and I have gotten stuck walking to school with a neighbor-kid, and it’s not that I don’t like neighbor-kid except that I don’t like neighbor-kid. Mostly because he’s a kid. Anyway, it’s just annoying because I know that his parents couldn’t be arsed to walk MY kid to school if I needed them to, but whatever.  Instead of talking to them about it—because again: this is how people get their faces shot off—Chooch and I decided that we would just do the mature thing and attempt to dodge him. Some mornings it works. Some, not so much. I think he watches us from his window with binoculars. The other day, we avoided him, but on my way back, I happened to see him walking with his dad; they were still a few blocks away, so I once again did the mature thing and turned down another road so I wouldn’t have to walk past them. I figured I would just loop around and get back on the main road again after they had already passed, except what I didn’t account for was the fact that the roads get all weird and intersect-y back there so it took me kind of a long time to make my way back around, running in the rain under a heavy umbrella while panting a play-by-play to Henry over the phone to his canned responses of, “You’re an asshole. You’re retarded. You’re an idiot. Good for you.” Anyway, by the time I made it back around to the main road, I thought for sure that the dad would be on his way back from the school so I skidded to a halt at the corner of the sidewalk and peered to my right to see if he was coming. I was in the clear! But exactly as I went to turn left onto the main street, I noticed that HE WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME! I didn’t want to walk the rest of the way home behind him, because his house comes before mine so he would see me when he turned down his sidewalk, so I turned back onto the street I came off on and walked a ridiculously long way home along the street behind our houses just so I wouldn’t have to run into him. It was completely stupid. Yet extremely satisfying. Because, VICTORY.
  • Yesterday, we got busted and had to walk with neighbor-kid, who started a pissing match with me over who has seen more horror movies and I was like, “ARE WE REALLY DOING THIS RIGHT NOW OK FINE!” Chooch just kept sighing sadly by my side, but I couldn’t stop until I got in the last dig, you guys. You know me. I just couldn’t stop. Finally, n-k was like, “Well, have you seen Hex on Syfy?” and I said YES EVEN THOUGH I HAVEN’T WHAT HAS MY LIFE COME TO. I don’t even know what Hex is. Is it even a real thing?  I was so stressed out after this. Oh and now suddenly he watches The Walking Dead but last time Chooch asked him he said no and this time he was like, “I’ve been watching it since it started” and I bet he doesn’t even understand it. UGH KIDS.
  • Today, I was going to pretend like I broke my pelvis just to see if his dad would walk them both for once, like I was going to roll myself down the porch steps and see if the parents would even notice, but Chooch was like, “Let’s just go, please, this is bullshit who cares.” Anyway, n-k’s dad was outside letting his dog pee, and I thought we were in the clear because n-k was nowhere around, like maybe his mom had actually walked him or something or he had fallen ill with Lyingabouthorrormoviesitis. But then the dad turned his head up the street and screamed, “HEY [KID’S NAME]! COME BACK! THEY’RE RIGHT HERE!” and that is how I found out that he was going to walk to school alone so now I have mom-guilt. And then the dad thanked me profusely and was all, “He just loves walking with you guys!” Obviously because I’m awesome and kids fucking love me. So I was sort of nice to him this morning, because like my Voice of Reason (aka Henry) said: You don’t know what his home life is like. You wouldn’t want someone to ditch YOUR kid.
    • Ugh, Henry is totally right.
    • This is the shit no one warns you about before you become a parent.
    • Just be nice, Erin.
      • And I was nice today, I swear. I even helped him tie his dumb shoe.
    • What a fantastic example I’m setting for my kid. (“We are not taking applicants for our hifalutin’ Walking 2 Skool Club!” God, I’m such a fuckhead.)
      • Besides, we’re all walking to the same place, anyway right? Sigh.
• Another totally fucked up local murder/suicide happened, which inspired a dialogue between Henry and me, which is crazy because usually we only communicate via Post-It Notes and lines in the dirt. I was saying that I couldn’t imagine doing something like that so permanent, knowing I was leaving kids behind. “Chooch is the only reason I would never murder you,” I told Henry and he was all, “Oh wow. Thanks Chooch, I guess. Nice to know that’s the only reason.” And then I got scared because what if Henry gets some gnarly brain tumor, the kind that makes a docile person do things that leaves neighbors saying to the newspaper, “But he was such a nice, quiet man.” And then this tumor makes Henry snap and kill me?! I mean come on: it would have to be a tumor, and not the fact that I pushed him over the motherfucking edge with my Chinese water torture-like brand of emasculation and staunch refusal to let the man sleep.

Let’s end this depressing post on a good note with a picture of some dino ring holders I made last night while watching the Penguins beat the Crapitals:

(I mean, I feel like these are pretty self-explanatory, but there are tutorials all over the DIY blogosphere if anyone is inclined to make their own. If I can do them 100% on my own, so can your blind cat.)