Can I just state for the record that I have amazing friends and family (I mean, the family I still associate with!)? When I asked a select few of them if they would come to a memorial dinner for Marcy, and would that be weird, they all said yes and no, in that order.

Lisa reminded me that anyone who knows me also knew Marcy, and it made sense that I would want to celebrate her life with my closest peeps. When I say that she touched a lot of lives, I am not joking. And that’s actually just a nicer way of saying she pierced a lot of flesh, anyway.

I knew right away that this had to happen at Blue Flame. I spent so much of my childhood there with my Pappap, had so many high school hangouts there with Lisa and our crew, and still gravitate toward it to this day when I need some comfort and a dose of familiarity.

But don’t get it twisted—this was no somber event! We laughed so much and told stories about Marcy, and this was really what I needed. I woke up on Saturday excited that I was going to see some of my favorite people later on, and that felt so much better than wallowing around in a quiet house. The bottom line is that I wanted to be around awesome people and celebrate Marcy’s legacy.

I made prayer cards to pass out and brought two framed photos of her to display on the tables. Judy of course knew the waitresses and owners of the Blue Flame, so after she got the obligatory hugs out of the way, she made sure to tell everyone that she was there for a cat’s memorial dinner. Even Wonka came, after the trauma Marcy put him through 15 years ago! (His note in the sympathy card he gave me started with “Though the world is now a safer place…”)

Barb at one point was talking about my favorite subject – me. I love listening to her go on and on about how amazing and incredible and perfect and goddess-like I am, how I should have won the Pulitzer by now and why haven’t I run for President yet and how come MTV hasn’t given me a show where I teach the world to be their best versions of Erin Rachelle Kelly; Lisa’s eyes were practically rolling out the door and across the parking lot.

“I am just fascinated by what goes on in Erin’s head!” Barb gushed, to which Lisa replied, “Let me explain it for you. Erin takes something thisbig and turns it into something THIS BIG,” Lisa frowned, making her fingers spread far away from the imaginary object she was holding. “Except the one thing she actually never exaggerated was her Marcy stories.” And Janna emphatically co-signed that sentiment from across the table.

Speaking of Janna! I got to tell the story about Janna getting in trouble for taking her mom’s car when we went to Nemacolin Castle last December, and Corey, who was sitting at another table, perked up and yelled, “Are you telling them about the silhouette?!” IT NEVER GETS OLD!

Barb and Kara were moderately chuckling at the story, Judy looked confused, and Lisa disappointingly sighed, “Poor Janna.” 

Meanwhile, Janna www mumbling about how it really wasn’t that funny and she wasn’t even “in trouble” with her mom like Corey and I keep insisting. We basically have Janna halfway to Flowers in the Attic. 

Judy told everyone the story about how whenever she would put her shoes on, Marcy would know that meant Judy was about to go outside, so she would race to the door and wait. They sat on the porch together every day last summer when she was here babysitting Chooch.

“I loved her, but I wouldn’t touch her. I never touched her ONCE,” Judy bragged. “She scared me too much.” She told us that one time when they were on the porch, Judy started to get up because she was ready to go in the house, and Marcy started swatting at her legs because she wasn’t ready yet. Marcy was like that.   

 Then I was pissed because Janna ordered stuffed French toast and I wished I had ordered it. Lisa was like, “JANNA DON’T YOU DARE GIVE HER YOUR FOOD!” Lisa is very much against people coddling me. I ended up getting raisin French toast, which is odd because I usually always get grilled cheese. I don’t know what I was thinking.

And then Barb purposely commented on my eyeball purse, which made Chooch whip around in his seat and glower at her.

“Why do you hate your mom’s purse so much, Chooch?” she asked him.

“Because! Every time we’re out, people are always like ‘Oh I love your purse’ and they pass me right up!” Chooch cried.

“Wow. Who does that remind me of?” Lisa deadpanned.

After dinner, everyone minus Barb and Lisa came back to my house for cake, wine, and hockey. Chooch and Harland drove Janna nuts with Minecraft questions, and maybe Wonka too but he was a better sport about it than Janna, who kept sighing angrily and stomping over to the computer to yell, “WHAT CHOOCH I DON’T KNOW!?” And then she had me and Corey laughing like hyenas on top of that, so it’s really a wonder she hangs out over here at all! We seriously talked about The Silhouette 87 times that night, to mixed reactions. Corey has also recently taken to sending me pictures of shadowy raised hands behind curtains, so god only knows what he’s googling to find those!

LEMON CAKE. It was OK. I wanted Henry to make this carrot cake that I found in a raw dessert cookbook online but apparently the ingredients were too “expensive.” OK, lazy ass.

Wonka’s girlfriend Jess said that my house was very stimulating and I was like, “Thank you for noticing!” There really is a lot to look at, which I think drives Henry nuts at times. And then Jess got pulled into a super intense “over-share” with Judy, where Henry overheard Judy mention something about a time she was engaged to some dude that Henry didn’t know about. Henry was like, “Well, I just learned something new about my mom.” Then I made her tell the Brick Alley story because that story rules.

We spent the rest of the evening hanging out, telling stories, looking through photo albums (it’s been a hot minute since Wonka and I used to hang out regularly, so that was a fun jog!), reminding Kara every 30 seconds of how adorable Theo is (and Harland!), and planning our next ridiculous trip to the Palace of Gold. It was just what I needed, even though I inadvertently drank too much wine and spent the early hours of Sunday full of regret. I like to imagine that Marcy was glaring down from wherever she is, pissed that so many people were in her house, but also kind of secretly enjoying it. Because for a cat who hated people, she sure was social.

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Here are some pictures of things that happened today.

Apparently, I had just a smidge too much wine last night, because when I woke up this morning, I felt like I had spent the night at Burning Man, and not just hosting several friends for a Marcy memorial. Wine hangovers are my jam, if by that I mean that I just puked into a jar of Smuckers. Luckily, I recovered in time to be able to traipse around the cemetery with Henry while Chooch was at piano.

Traipsing.

The cemetery in which the traipsing occurred.

Me: “Why do you need a stick?”

Henry: “In case I need to hit a hipster on a bike.”

Valid.

Then we went to the mausoleum to pee and I wanted Henry to take fun and hilarious selfies with me but then I remembered that he’s against fun.

After Chooch’s piano lesson, we went to the playground in North Park, where Chooch managed to kick a soccer ball into his face, flip through the air, fall into a tree stump, and start bleeding all within 10 seconds. It was truly a sight to behold. Then he complained that he didn’t have anyone to play with and we were like THERE ARE NO LESS THAN 8 BOYS AROUND YOUR OWN AGE MILLING ABOUT AIMLESSLY JUST LIKE YOU’RE DOING, GO PICK ONE TO BE AWKWARD WITH.

Then after awhile I realized I hadn’t seen him for a good 10 minutes (there was some car race happening in the parking lot, and it was distracting me from being a parent).  “Where is our child?” I asked and Henry just shrugged. “I don’t know. Over in Pouter’s Field somewhere.” That’s when we found him sitting behind a tree like the Saddest Kid Ever, which was kind of apropos since it’s National Only Child Day (technically he’s not, but when your siblings are 14+ years older than you….).

And that is how Henry and I were guilted into kicking a soccer ball back and forth even though Henry has two broken Pallet Jack Feet and I was wearing TOMS. (Have you ever kicked a soccer ball while wearing TOMS? Feels fucking fantastic.)

Then we went to Kelley’s Dari Delite for ice cream and I changed my mind 18 times (seriously—hard ice cream or soft serve?! A milkshake or a sundae!?) but eventually opted for maple soft serve (maple is my everything) with crunchies and for once I felt pretty secure in my final decision.

Not actually whining.

And now I will leave you with my current favorite song from the new Dance Gavin Dance album, Instant Gratification, which comes out on Tuesday and you should go buy it. Borderline infatuated with it. OK fine, lose the “borderline.” I’m straight psycho for this record. I was trying to tell Henry earlier how perfect Tilian Pearson is for Dance Gavin Dance, and how it’s almost like Jonny Craig was never even in this band, but then I started to cry, because #emotions #posthardcoreprobs #scenekidsentiments

(That 2:07 mark, tho. Heart eyes for days.)

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Grief is such a fucked up emotion. My first taste of it was when my Pappap died in 1996 and I honestly felt like there was an icy fist squeezing my heart—for months. It was this sickening, cold sensation inside my ribs, a constant reminder of loss. But even though I was grieving, and crying, and puking, and wallowing…I wanted to talk about it. I needed to, really. But my family isn’t like that. No one wanted to talk about it, but luckily I had friends…and the high school social worker.

It always made me wonder how I turned out differently. Talking about it has always been how I process, make sense, cope, and heal. I will talk about the same thing over and over until I’m blue in the face, and maybe it’s annoying for everyone else (i.e. Henry), but it helps me understand and heal so that I can go back to living my life.

On my 21st birthday, I went to visit my grandma. It had been 5 and a half years since my Pappap’s death at that point, and this particular birthday was difficult for me. I sat with my grandma on her bed and tried to talk about it. She shot me down immediately and became visibly upset at my audacity to speak of such verboten subjects. I explained that I really needed to talk about it, though, that his death had really affected me too.

She looked at me and said, “You were just the granddaughter.”

I don’t know what I thought was going to happen. Those people are just absolutely allergic to feelings, and here I am, the emo black sheep.

Am I completely over my Pappap’s death? FUCK NO. Maybe I’m not curled up in the fetal position, sobbing about it every night, but I do have those moments every now and then, on my birthday, on his birthday, at a damn Mike + the Mechanics show. But mostly, I smile when I see pictures of him, or hear songs that remind me of pool parties at his house, or post-church grilled cheese at Blue Flame. I like to talk about him and write about him because it keeps his memory alive. I try to honor him any chance I get, because he was the greatest man I have ever known. There is not a single day that goes by that I don’t think of him.

I have been grieving Marcy in this same fashion. It fucking hurts. I cry a lot when I’m alone, because that’s when her absence feels the heaviest. But…I am also able to tell stories about her at work (Glenn and Todd* are thrilled about this) while SMILING. I’m not 100% ready to let go yet. There are still some things I need to do, like the dinner we’re having with some of our friends tonight in her memory, the actual burial next month (the pet cemetery doesn’t start burying pets until May), and the tattoo that is already being drawn up. And then on Monday, Amber¹ 

 

*(Yesterday, I thrust my phone in Todd’s face and said LOOK AT THIS PICTURE OF MARCY FROM ONE DAY LAST SUMMER WHEN I WAS LOCKED OUT OF THE HOUSE AND SHE DIDN’T CARE. Todd was like, “OK. Wow.” Also, Todd is terrified of cats, so my Marcy stories don’t really do much for him.)

****

Completely befitting of Marcy’s volatile nature, it was thunder storming pretty savagely on Thursday evening when we arrived at Animal Friends. I half-expected to be struck down by lightning, one last act of Marcy-controlled physical infliction.

We were a little bit early, so we spent some time looking at the shelter animals. Mistake, mistake, mistake. I was crying before the vigil even started.

At 7, we gathered in a small room with seven others. Two were the volunteers in charge of the vigil, and one was a Methodist minister who was there to provide the spiritual portion of the evening. There was an older woman who lost her dog, an older couple who lost their dog, and an old lady who lost her rabbit. (And when I say “older,” I mean “older than Henry.”) To start off the vigil, one of the volunteers stood up and read the Rainbow Bridge poem, and I just sat there, box of Kleenex on my lap, openly weeping. It was OK — the older woman who lost her dog was sobbing too so that was comforting. Kind of.

The minister told us a story about her childhood dog, and I briefly considered converting to Methodist and joining her church, because she was pretty awesome. I started to feel better listening to her homily. She talked a lot about grief and how losing a pet hurts just as much as losing a person, and the worst thing that anyone can say to us during this time is, “Get over it” or “It’s just an animal.” She made me feel less crazy.

After the homily, the main volunteer—Jannie—read each story that we were asked to submit ahead of time, and as she read for each pet, the other volunteer lit a candle and presented us with a rose, a copy of the Rainbow Bridge rolled up like a scroll and tied with ribbon. Attached to the ribbon was a paper heart with a seed inside of it, for us to plant in our pet’s honor. I cried so hard listening to the story’s of the other pets being read. Everyone else there wrote about their pet’s death, but I didn’t include that part in Marcy’s story. I just wrote about what she was like, and Jannie interrupted herself when reading it to say, “Geez, she sounds like Grumpy Cat!” It was nice to laugh with everyone. But at the end of the story, Speck was mentioned and Chooch started crying when he heard her name. He is still so upset about her death, three years later, and it breaks my heart. When we came home from putting Marcy to sleep, Chooch took a picture of Speck off the wall and carried it around with him the rest of the day. Totally heartbreaking.

After the vigil, Jannie invited everyone to stick around and share more stories about their pets. “You know who I’m dying to hear from? Riley!”

I kind of thought he was going to pass, but he sat up straight and said thoughtfully, “Well…Marcy only ever scratched me twice, but she didn’t have her claws out so it didn’t hurt. I guess she was just warning me. Um…every time Mommy’s friend Janna came over, Marcy would attack her and then Mommy would laugh and post about it on her blog.” Everyone was laughing, and I thought that was all he was going to say, but then he burst into tears and, a la Chunk being interrogated by the Fratellis, went on to say, “I liked Marcy, but I was the most upset when Speck died. She was my favorite cat.” And you guys, he was crying so hard that he was shuddering in his seat. I felt so terrible and kept squeezing his knee and patting his back, and the volunteers and the minister were so quick to offer wisdom and words of comfort to him.

But it was good for him to cry and important for him to know that it was OK to cry. It was good for all of us to cry together, with strangers who are going through the same thing, rather than keep it all bottled up and act  like nothing happened, like my family always does. I honestly believe that not properly dealing with their father’s death is what made my mom and aunt crazy.

My favorite part though was when I got to show everyone a picture of Marcy. Everyone was like, “Oh wow! Those eyes! What a beauty!” and I was like, “Yeah, that’s how she got you! She lured you in with her looks and then attacked.” That was the funniest thing about her: for as much as she “hated” humans, she was ALWAYS FRONT AND CENTER. Any time I had a party, and I used to have a lot of crazy parties back in the day, she was always present, stalking around the floors or glaring down from tabletops, just waiting for some idiot to stick their hand out. She was fucking smart as shit. Scary smart, really.

Before we left, one of the volunteers said, “I just want to  tell Riley that I think it’s awesome he loves cats. Men who love cats are so rare and special. One day, you’re going to meet a girl, and she’s going to say, ‘Here, meet my cat!’ and when she sees that you’re a cat lover, she’s never going to want to let you go!” Chooch was still quietly crying, but this made him smile (and blush) a little.

I felt OK when we left. A little less heart-achey. Not completely “cured,” but I think that was a really helpful and important part in the process for me. I’m the type of person who needs to DO SOMETHING about it. I can only lay in bed and cry for so long. I need to talk and be with people and laugh and remember. (If Barb was there, she would have for sure quoted the “laughter through tears” line from Steel Magnolias*. I think it’s her favorite thing to quote.) And this night of grieving with strangers helped put some light back into me.

And, I think it helped Chooch even more than any of us imagined.

*(It really does feel good, though.)

 

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It was a Saturday morning on March 28th, and Henry was having his daily “you people are fucking helpless!” rant, all because I ran out of makeup at the exact moment Chooch suddenly needed a piece of toast. So now Henry had to decide which to do first: go to the store for makeup or make toast. This particular rant ended with “If I end up in the hospital someday, you two are NOT moving into that room with me!”

So it was pretty funny that several hours later, he was dropping off us downtown in order for us to go to the Penguins game.

Alone.

As in: WITHOUT HIM.

“BUT WHERE DO WE GO?!” I cried as Henry slammed on the brakes in order for us to catapult out of the car. It was an area I was unfamiliar with! (Like, all of them.)

“Just follow the people in hockey jerseys!” Henry barked, mumbling ‘idiot’ under his breath.

 

This day was notable for two reasons:

1. Chooch and I were going to put our big kid pants on and handle ourselves independently of Henry. DOWNTOWN.
2. This was going to be Chooch’s first ever hockey game!

It’s amazing that he agreed to go with me, especially since it was last minute (Barb gave me the tickets the day before — she is the best fairy god mother of all time and I still miss her EVERY SINGLE DAAAAAY), because Chooch hates hockey. And if there is one thing he hates more than hockey, it’s the Pittsburgh Penguins specifically.

I can pinpoint for you the exact moment this aversion, this fiery hatred, started: It was Friday, June 12, 2009. Chooch was three-years-old, and the Pens had just won the Stanley Cup. I was screaming. Like, lunatic-levels of verbal raving. And then I picked up Chooch and started jumping with him in arms, still screaming and woo-ing and crying tears of hockey happiness.

Chooch lost his shit. He started shaking and trying to pull away from the psycho broad shouting PENNNNNNNNNS in his face like some asshole being raptured, and then he was crying too, but not the same way I was. He was crying in the vein of a child in the throes of being scarred for life.

My friend Alisha was there that night, and she was like, “OMG put him down! You’re scaring him!” All of this in conjunction with the neighbors running into the streets outside, banging pots and pans and creating absolute sports-related pandemonium, paved the path for a very traumatic event in Chooch’s life. He probably thought the world was ending.

Ever since then, he has purposely rooted for every opposing team, especially the Flyers, oh how he loves to break my heart by cheering them on out of spite; one time I told him I was going to buy orange balloons for the birthday party HE WASN’T HAVING. But Barb was like, “Maybe if you take him to a game, he’ll change his mind.”

Right away, he said he would go with me and of course he had to wear one of my Penguins shirts because god forbid he should have any of his own. That annoyed him.

“You know I’m going to cheer for the Coyotes,” he warned on the way to Consol, and I promised that I would abandon him in an alley with nary a cardboard box if he even WHISPERED it.

But then we got there and he was like, “OK. This isn’t so bad.” Also, Henry gave me money so that I could buy him food to keep his mouth shut. That seemed to help.

He was really excited about singing the National Anthem and kept talking about it and talking about it and I was like, “Who gets excited over the Star Spangled Banner, you freak!?” But then he got to have the last laugh because some soldier had returned home from somewhere and surprised his family on the ice right before the game started, so I started crying because I just can’t handle life anymore. Chooch was like, “Are you CRYING? Jesus Christ.”

But then the best thing happened! The game started and everyone started screaming LET’S GO PENS and then CHOOCH was screaming LET’S GO PENS! My heart, oh my heart.

After the first period, we managed to go to the bathroom separately without losing* each other! WE ARE GETTING SO GOOD AT BEING….people.

 

*OK, I thought I lost him for a few minutes, but he was just waiting for me inside the helmet. Which is exactly where I told him to meet me.

Also, Chooch said to me, “I actually didn’t use the men’s room. The line was so long, so I just came back over here by the helmet and used the family restroom.” I love that he has way more ingenuity than me. If the line to the women’s room was too long, I would have just cried about it, peed my pants, felt rage, considered killing myself, and then blogged 87 paragraphs for no one to read about my ill-fated journey.

Chooch just rationally finds another place to piss.

I’M DOING SUCH A GOOD JOB RAISING HIM!

Here is Chooch coming back from buying a Dilly Bar after spending two periods wearing me down. “Now can I have a Dilly Bar? When can I have a Dilly Bar? Wait…what’s a Dilly Bar, again?” Then he would look at the scoreboard and cry, “IT’S STILL 0-0?!!?” The two older men next to me kept spitting out disparaging remarks about how boring the game was, Kunitz needs to go, Bennett needs to go, shoot the fucking puck. But they were surprisingly not too loud about it so I didn’t get all that upset. And every time they would leave their seats, they would high-five Chooch, so they weren’t all too bad.

 

I think what really won him over was Iceburgh, the Penguins’ mascot. We all know that Chooch is a future furry, and he gloms on to mascots every where we go. So, he spent most of the time searching the stands for Iceburgh.

But then in the third period, actual scoring finally started happening so Chooch was like, “Hmm. This is kind of cool.” Except for the times when I would accidentally scream in his ear and then he’d consider going back to hating hockey. I CAN’T HELP IT. I’M A SCREAMER.

“Man, I just really wish you could see Crosby score,” I lamented to Chooch. And then, no less than 10 seconds later, Crosby scored. I wish it always worked that way.

The Pens ended up winning (amazingly, considering the abysmal streak they’ve been on during this season’s homestretch) and Chooch got to see a fight and unfortunately, a grisly hit by Shane Doan on Letang, which stopped the game for a good 10 minutes before Letang was finally able to get and skate off to the locker room, with assistance. Chooch was outraged by all of this and become obsessed with flipping off Shane Doan’s picture in the game’s program.

 

Right when we were leaving our seats, some guy walked by and said, “YOUR SHIRT IS AWESOME!” except that he said it to ME and not CHOOCH, and you guys know how Chooch gets when shit like this happens. It was basically like this guy took my eyeball purse and beat Chooch with it, that’s how much it stung him. God, he is so attention-starved! He must get that shit from Henry.

Chooch was so pleasant all afternoon that I caved and bought him a plush Iceburgh. And then we managed to make it all the home on the trolley without accidentally giving the homeless people all of my money (Bleeding Heart Syndrome) or falling off a cliff.

Then we came home and I asked Henry if he missed us and he said no because we were only gone for a few hours. :(

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Sometimes my day can be so spectacularly disappointing (all work-related, nothing that actually matters) but then something music-related happens to save the day. Pierce the Veil was added to the Warped Tour lineup, and even though everyone pretty much already knew that because of a leaked flyer, it was still awesome to find out for sure!

This year’s Warped Tour has the potential to be better than 2008, which was my favorite one! 

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Being in the house has been hard on me this past week, and I have been lashing out at Henry and Chooch. Projection, you know? I am definitely grieving this death in a much different way than I have with the other cats. I feel like I have no control.   Luckily, it was a beautiful, sunny day, kind of chilly still, but who cares. I made the unilateral decision that we would get tacos and take them to the cemetery.

Sunshine helps. So do tacos.

I had been wanting to try El Burro for a few months now, once I found out that they have a vegetarian/vegan menu. Any food establishment that has the decency to cater to those of us who don’t dine on animals is immediately OK in my book. However, this place kind of left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Literally.

First of all, I didn’t feel “cool” enough to even walk in. And then Chooch was being difficult because he loves doing this thing where he’s only interested in eating things that aren’t available where we are. So of course he was whining about only wanting a sandwich. Luckily, the girl behind the counter was too busy staring at her phone and listening to Chvrches to notice that a meltdown was about to occur.

This all happened while Henry was outside putting money in the meter because he thought we were eating there even though I explicitly said, “And we will eat in the cemetery.” I said this like four times. FOUR TIMES! I was already irritated, so this helped a lot, thanks Henry.

Anyway, I got a sweet potato and cauliflower taco, which was excellent. But as a game time decision, I also blurted out that I wanted the vegan chorizo burrito, which turned out to be a mistake. It was TERRIBLE. It takes a lot for me to be disappointed with Mexican food (authentic, TexMex, Taco Bell — I’ll eat it all), but this made me super sad.

The tortilla tasted exactly like that Taco Bell grilled stuft thing, I don’t know what it’s called. Grilled Stuft? Which is whatever, I guess. But the inside was just terrible: bland, soggy rice and the vegan chorizo was dry as fuck. It was like eating something I had made for myself, you guys, like dining on actual dry rot. So disappointing and peppered with alarming flavors that you just can’t pinpoint. I even made Henry taste it and I screamed, “WHAT IS THAT WEIRD TASTE!?” and he was stumped. It takes a lot to make me complain about food, but that was enough for me to probably never go back.

But those tacos though. Ugh. I should have just gotten more tacos instead of that day-ruining burrito.

There is this local guy who reviews the FUCK out of the city on Yelp, and he is so goddamn annoying. He’s like the Oh Honestly, Erin of Yelp reviews in that they are way too long, didn’t read. But the worst part about him is that he has his dick so far inside a thesaurus that his reviews are actually sketchy to read if you’re the type of person who frowns upon becoming inseminated by jizz-coated 5-syllable words. Sometimes Henry will torture himself by trying to slag through an entire paragraph about the salt on a pretzel, and he has to pause after every other word to ask me, “What does this word mean?” and a lot of times, I don’t even know!

“He has no fucking life!” I cried after hate-reading a particularly War & Peace-ish review of pizza, to which Henry sneered, “Actually, he does. He’s always going places so he can write his obnoxious reviews.”

In one of his reviews about your basic bar food, he replaced “salty” with “saliferous.” SALIFEROUS! Even my phone was like “the FUCK is this?”‘ and tried to change it to “saki detours.”

UGH FUCK THAT GUY. There is a time and a place for smart würdz, and a Yelp review is not one.

Anyway, I only mentioned him because Henry was excited when he looked up El Burro on Yelp and noticed that our mortal enemy hasn’t been there yet.

Yeah so I totally pouted about my burrito and we left the cemetery after about 10 minutes. Luckily, the day was salvaged by a spontaneous trip to the Antique Mall on Rt. 65.    

There were no wheelchairs, but I had my eye (I only have one of those now) on some questionable art work.

My least favorite part of the day was when Chooch didn’t know some broad had entered the room with us and he came bursting out from behind the beaded curtains, saying some shit about “JUST DID DRUGS.” Great. I’m glad that his YouTube habit is teaching him to associate beaded curtains with drugs.

I should probably pay better attention to the shit he watches. Ugh.

  

We taught Chooch about these things called ROTARY PHONES and then some old man came over and told us a yarn about how when he was a kid, he’d put a nickel in his shoe in case he needed to phone home from the soda shop’s phone booth. Chooch had this shit-eating grin on his face the whole time, like this guy was lying to him.  I mean, what a boring lie.

Then we got gelattttoooo and I was sad because I got coconut cream pie gelato but wished I had ordered hazelnut. UGH. GELATO REMORSE.

I don’t think I was mean to anyone for the rest of the day. So, that was good.

We watched some more Breaking Bad that night and I was excited because Howard Jones’s “New Song” was playing very faintly in the background of one scene! I was like HOWARD JONES! I JUST SAW HIM! And Henry had that HOW CAN YOU HEAR THAT?? look on his face. (OMG HE’S ON THE RADIO RIGHT NOW TOO AS I’M WRITING THIS! I can hear him wafting down from my bedroom radio.)

And then it was Easter! We are guilty of falling into the whole Christmas Lite mentality. So this year we were like fuck it and just got him 2 CDs (Fall Out Boy & Ed Shereen—he LOVES Ed Shereen for some reason), a Grumpy Cat coloring book and the standard candy loot. Which is still more than Easter is worth, but oh well. Jesus is Risen, put on the Fall Out Boy CD.

Chooch didn’t seem to notice that we even downgraded the size of the actual basket. I guess he’s not as spoiled as I thought!

Then, family photos and a late afternoon frolic in South Park where Chooch ended every one of his actions with the obnoxious declaration of “LIKE A BOSS” except for when he fell and bit it, but don’t worry, I made the declaration for him.

Like a boss, Chooch.

After the park, we met Corey at Pan Asia for inappropriate, LOUD AS FUCK laughing which Henry haaaaates.

For some reason, Corey and I are still riding high on the time we went to Nemacolin Castle with Janna in December and Janna got in trouble for taking her mom’s car. Corey pointed at the frosted pane of glass behind the sushi bar and cried, “I’m picturing Janna behind the glass, getting beat by her mom!” And then I started cracking up too and Chooch yelled, “Is that all you two do is laugh?!” He was just mad because he brought an entire backpack of Pokemon cards and crayons and Corey was too distracted by his salacious thoughts of Janna.

And then somehow we started pretending that Janna was a coke head  and Henry was just like DISAPPOINTED SIGH. Sorry you’re so saliferous, Henry.

It was a nice Easter weekend.

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Trufax: When all of my friends were head over heels in love with Alanis Morissette in high school, I wasn’t impressed. I remember one day on the way to tennis practice, my friend Christy was like, “You should listen to this, I bet you would like it” and I all, “Nah bro, that’s too white for me.” If it wasn’t being reviewed by Rap Pages or The Source magazines, then I wasn’t interested. I didn’t hate Alanis like I hate Katy Perry, it wasn’t like that at all. She just wasn’t my thang.

(She was Corey’s thang, though. I have live footage of him singing a mangled rendition of “Ironic” when he was 4. And hoo boy, was it interesting!)

But then one day in 1998 (my Golden Year), I was in the car with my mom and she cried, “HAVE YOU HEARD THIS SONG YET?!?!” as Alanis’s most recent track began playing on the radio. I rolled my eyes at first because once my mom hit her 40s, her taste in music became way less respectable. That fucking Lonestar song was her favorite song for at least 7 straight years, tied only with Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” Ugh, please don’t let that happen to me.

(As if.)

So I expected this song to be pure, homogenized shit.

But it wasn’t. It was fucking haunting and creepy and it made the hairs on my arms stand erect.

I went out and bought the City of Angels soundtrack specifically for “Uninvited.”

***************

Henry and I were just waking up on Easter morning when that goddamn Goo Goo Doll’s song, “Iris,” came on the bedroom radio. I have been waking up in a sour mood lately, the byproduct of a zillion conflicting emotions crashing into each other like blind people in a mosh pit, and because of this, I got very angry at this song.

“I can’t believe that this song is still being played on the radio when it was like, the least best song on the City of Angels soundtrack!” I cried into the side of Henry’s face. “DON’T YOU REMEMBER HOW SICK THAT ALANIS TRACK WAS?

!”

And he sleepily mumbled that no, no he did not remember. So I fumbled for my phone, because that is my favorite thing to do, cull up songs that he apparently has no recollection of. And then I placed in on his pillow, volume maxed out, right next to his ear. It’s his favorite way to fully wake up.

That moment was the first time in probably 15 years that I have heard “Uninvited,” and goddamn if my arm hairs didn’t stand just as erect.

I have obviously fallen down the 1998 rabbit hole and I don’t want to come back. I’ll send post cards. And a Delia*s catalog. And then when I come back, I’m making a Spotify playlist.

Because that year, that whole entire year, was my motherfucking jam.

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The Easter Bunny came back from vacation just in time for Henry and me to regress and sit on his lap.

 

 

Chooch just sat there eating carrots while Henry and I fought in between shots. But to be honest, I think this one of the most docile photo shoots we’ve ever done, somehow.

 

I have shorts on underneath here. I’m not that slutty. Ignore the writing on the bathroom stalls.

 

Chooch happily took our pictures. He was like fuck yes, the camera isn’t pointed on me for once.

 

God forbid we should ever just have a regular photo taken of us.

 

 

Happy Easter, you guys!

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Thank God Henry does everything I tell him to do.   #powercouple

#justkidding

 

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Thankfully, being snap-happy runs in my family, so my bro Corey was always taking Polaroids when he was 8. The day after she died, he texted me this photo he took right after I brought her home in 1998. I’m so glad that he did, even though it made me cry, because it also brought back good memories.

I know I told this story before, but IDGAF. I was working at Olan Mills when I was 18, and one day the proof consultant mentioned that her neighbor’s cat had kittens, and there was one left that they were trying to place. My family was NOT into cats. I had barely ever even been around any cats, so the whole time I’m like, “Erin don’t do it—” but it was too late — my hand had already shot in the air, and I had claimed this kitten.

The next day, this tiny, weeks-old fur ball was waiting for me in a box near my work station. You guys, this is no joke: this might have been the first time I ever got heart-eyes. My boss Gladys wanted me to name her Shaniqua or something equally as dumb, but I knew right away that she was going to be Marcy. I was really into alternative rock back then, and Marcy’s Playground was the shit, y’all. It was Marcy or GTFO.

Though I did have a wide array of “a/k/a”s for her, such as: Mitch, MadgeOla, Smidge, Maybe It’s Maybelline, Pretty Rainbow Sparkles, Jock Strap (???), Plumey (because of her big, full tail), YoYo Berry, Girly SueSue, and Shark Attack. But her full, God-given name was Marciples von Schlugenhusen.

I couldn’t believe that she was the last one in the litter. How was she not the first one adopted?! I feel sorry for the people who opted for the other kittens, because they have no idea that they passed over the sassiest, bossiest, most motherfucking regal feline in all of the land. Their loss, my gain.

My rocky relationship with Psycho Mike was ending around this time, and there’s no way I could have known how much I needed her. Marcy was like a 24-hour therapy session, with bright blue eyes, soft fur, and a propensity for stealing my food right off my plate and taking up most of my pillow space. The healing process started as soon as she stormed her way into my life.

Janna and I used to take her for drives around town, because I had always had dogs as pets and thought that this was a normal thing. Turns out, nope. She wasn’t really down with that, so we eventually gave up.

Marcy accumulated an eclectic array of interests and disinterests in her 17 years.

She hated: me, laughter, Janna, children, the other cats, the mailman, the gas man (notably the one who called her “that dog”), bubbles, having her tail touched, being pointed at (she would come at you), being tic-tac’d (I would tap her on the back and then turn and pretend it wasn’t me), having yacht rock dance parties, when I would hold her up to the mirror and cry MOMMY AND MITCH IN THE MIRRORRRRR, God.

She loved: Henry, Satan, Frostys, Cool Ranch Doritos, the taste of blood, the smell of fear, destroying puzzles, game board-blocking, going outside with Henry’s mom, yelling at birds through the window, when I would rub an ice cube on her in the summer and say OOOOH, NICE N’ COO! (OK, maybe not the last part), having a reputation, generally being left alone.

It occurred to me the other day that Marcy was in my life longer than my Pappap was. This utterly blew my mind. If you have never had a pet, maybe this seems absurd, but she had as much impact on me as he did. They were both strong, positive constants in my life; two very different beings from which I felt comfort and familiarity. He was my entire childhood; she was my entire adulthood up to this point. And it’s pretty ironic, because my Pappap hated cats with a passion. No one in my family ever even THOUGHT about getting a cat while he was around. So it’s giving me a little bit of peace to think of them together right now, my Pappap trying hard to pretend that he doesn’t like her. You know, like she did with me. <3

 

 

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In today’s installment of How Not to Fall Off the Ledge, let’s discuss some things that induce happiness, such as….

• Wendy’s inability to operate an umbrella:
  
• Getting to see my buddy Nina and her adorable boys while they’re visiting from Virginia:

Before we left for lunch with Wendy, Little Q was all over my desk, but what kid wouldn’t be!? He tried to walk off with one of my zombie finger puppets, so I traded him two fingers, which he seemed content with, especially since one was wearing an eyeball ring which he turned into a “trophy.” Then he chased Marlene around with them and she was all, “Oh gee, I wonder where you could have gotten FINGERS from.”

Nina asked if it was OK that Q  kept them, and I was like, “Sure, I have more!” But then I came back later and pouted about it. (Just kidding! But Q better remember me the next time I see him.)

• My friends & family. All of them: real life, online, work (even the frenemies like Glenn, Ethan and Todd) who have been kind to me all week during this hard time. Losing a pet is an ache like no other. I’m lucky to have so many amazing people who have been popping over to say they understand, or texting from other states, or offering to ply me with ice cream. Or just distracting me with their IRRITATING BANTER, UGH GLENN.
• A boyfriend who makes his girlfriend one of her favorite desserts (strawberry shortcake!) in a valiant effort to keep her from defenestration.

• Thinking about last week’s hockey game that Chooch and I went to, which is on tap to be written about, but…you know. Anyway, I still want to mention it because it makes me happy every time I think back to the fun time we had.
• We had a Biggest Loser challenge at work and I came in #2! I lost 14.something pounds. I excitedly told Glenn that I came in second, and he mumbled, “You’ll always be the biggest loser to me.”
• EASTER! I don’t know how it happened, but somewhere along the way, Easter has become a holiday that I actually enjoy, which is strange because it was the first one that occurred after my Pappap died, which got the ball rolling for my family to stop giving a shit about celebrating holidays. So for a while, I did associate it with that. But now I think about springtime and being religiously idiotic and thinking of the non-traditional things that me, Henry and Chooch can do that day. It’s supposedto be beautiful on Sunday, so I predict that we will be spending most of it outdoors, and then Corey is going to join us for dinner at whichever random Chinese restaurant happensto be open.
  • Most importantly, though, I’m excited because we still have to take our Easter bunny portraits! If you’ve been pissing around on this blog for the last few years, you know that we haven’t done the whole formal mall Easter bunny thing in forever, probably not since Chooch was three. It started as an accident, where we literally just forgot to take him to the mall, so we had to do a last minute picture with Henry wearing a plastic rabbit mask. And now it’s like, why pay all that money to get a picture with the same rabbit every year when we can just do it ourselves? So, finalizing the theme has been a beautiful distraction for me this week. Can’t wait to get this done tomorrow!

 

• The guest post I wrote for the Pittsburgh Guest Blog Exchange! Did you read it? DID YOU?! It’s about Mister Rogers and there is a companion painting, so you should go and look.
• SHATTERED DREAMS:

 

• Thinking of the future and not dwelling on the past. I’m letting myself mourn and grieve, for sure (come on, this emo girl ain’t changing her ways) and there have been plenty of times when I have just fucking lost it in the shower, but it’s not going to bring her back. So instead of immersing myself up to my head in the sadness pond, I have been thinking of ways to honor Marcy. Obviously, a tattoo. But that can’t happen right away, so in the meantime, I’m having a memorial dinner for her next Saturday, at the one restaurant that has always brought me a sense of comfort, Blue Flame. I’m just excited to be with friends and reminisce about how evil and amazing and beautiful and scary Marcy was. I fucking miss her so much and this sucks. But…happy thoughts.

There is so much to be happy about, and sometimes the doom and gloom just needs to go and fuck itself.

 

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Because not only am I cat lady, but a cat lady with waaaaay too much nervous energy in her brain, I used to keep a LiveJournal for Marcy back in the day (one of approximately 12 LiveJournals that I used to ghost write; I was way more insane in my 20s, apparently).

I thought today would be fun to share some tales from her secret life. Because I am mourning, so you all must be sucked into this hole with me. CLEARLY.

(On the real, don’t worry about me. I will mourn and grieve and post pictures and stories about her and then I will be able to accept the fact that she is gone and in peace, and we can all move on with our lives. Just….give me a few decades  weeks.)

Anyway, here are a few entries from the Diary of Marciples von Schlugenhusen.

****************

December 9th, 2004: Marcy Has a Necklace

I would like to share a photograph with you mortals. I think it will paint a vivid picture of my superiority.

Here, you can see I am modeling exotic bling. How did such fine jewelry come to be in my possession, you ask?

The year was 1923, and Father had presented me with an all expense paid trip to visit Uncle Adolf Hitler while he was imprisoned in Landsberg. I was fresh out of Infernal Boarding School, which was situated in a hidden location in a small Bavarian town. But that’s a tale for another time.

Uncle Adolf was filled with jubilance upon seeing me enter the visiting quarters. We sat at a table and immersed ourselves in deep heated discourse about Jews, Communism, making dolls branded with the swastika just in time for the holidays. Oh how my skin burns when I think of Christmas, but I was always out to make a quick buck back then. I can recollect Uncle Adolf filling my head with ideas and outlines for his book, Mein Kampf. It is a very little known fact that I was his ghostwriter. I am currently in the process of schooling my daughter Wilhemina of all the glorious (some humans may argue that the proper word is ‘glorified,’ but they are ones who were too imbecilic to fully understand the genius of my Uncle) musings procured from that volume.

Before my visit came to an end, Uncle Adolf insisted that I take this jeweled pendant with me, as a keepsake.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have demonic spirits to conjure.

****

August 2005: Where Marcy Gets Sea Monkeys

She gave me Sea Monkeys as a means to teach me “responsibility.” Is she kidding? I thought that apprenticing under Pol Pot in 1976 was an exercise in responsibility.

No? Well, then I suppose staring at a container of swimming parasites will do the trick.

Oh, marvelous! Now I’m barraged with memories of my time with Pol. I’ll never forget the day we sat on a tuft of prairie grass, picnicing on a buffet of Cambodia’s finest examples of cuisine, such as Nim Chow and sticky rice with a succulent mango curry, when Pol mused out loud that he was unable to think of a plan to get his genocide agenda underway. Licking the peanut sauce from beneath a nail, I lazily suggested starvation. That Pol, he went wild for my idea!

Anyway. This lady is crazy if she thinks I can be trusted with this, although there’s not really anything there for me to sink my teeth into–do these floating germs even contain blood?

She keeps pressing my face against the container walls and cooing about how happy I am that I have my very own pets, when really I’m smacking my lips and imagining lounging pool-side, slurping down a mouthful of brisk Sea Monkey water through a twisted straw. Mmm, quenching.

But in all reality, I give it one day before that kid Lucky knocks it off the windowsill. Bye bye, Sea Monkeys. I’m not your baby-sitter.

July 2006: Marcy Reminisces About Her Past 

Oh diary, you which hold the annals of my life, how sorry I am to have neglected you. The days are long and exhausting for me lately; the heat unbearable. It brings back laborious memories of traversing the torrid Sahara, en route to Cleopatra’s abode for holiday. My caravan would parlay to see who would have to attack passing nomads in order to acquire purloined provisions. The taxing journey was worth it, for upon arrival, Cleo would snap her cat o’ nine tails at her bow-legged servants, who would in turn scamper off to draw us a bath of warm milk and urine.

How did you think I kept my skin so supple?

Listen to me, rambling on and on about dear Cleo.

I was inspired to pull out some dusty photograph albums and oh how the memories flooded back when I brushed the dust from this photo:

Julius Caesar himself had commissioned one of his own Roman artists to capture our likeness on that balmy, languid afternoon. I remember it so fondly, as it was mere moments after I fed a baby to Cleo’s pet asp, Spot.

But alas, these are but memories, and then I remember that is the 21st century and am treated as nothing more than a mere house cat.

And for the record, that new half human who lives in my house has very meaty thighs in which I long to sink my teeth.

*****September 2006: Marcy Endures a Post-Baptism PartyThat damn child was — dare I say? — baptized on Sunday. Can you imagine? She and all of her disgusting friends gathered around an altar while a vile priest (I spit!) anoints the small human with stinky oil and holy water (oh, I shudder to think!).

I am quite positive that her friend Brian played a hearty part in this affair, being affiliated with Christ-like things and all. To think I used to let him lull me to sleep with the soothing aural candy which would pour out from between his lips. A pox on him, I say.

And then, after gathering holy dust all amongst the fibers of their clothing, she and all of her cohorts came back to my house to “break the bread,” as the sniveling Catholics say. The very flesh beneath my fur seared from the exposure to the leftover church-y particles being circulated throughout the air I breathe.

Oh, Father in Hell, I cried out your name and plead for mercy.

And then came the despicable display of affection bestowed upon the small human. People waiting their turn to lift the hefty sack of flesh into their arms, pretending that they do not care about the bag of shit in which he was swaddled. Why do humans get such joy in having saliva drizzled onto their clothing, straight from the mouth of another human? It is pure repulsion.

But then an odd turn of events occurred: Attention turned onto myself.

“That is the evil cat!” people would exclaim at random.

“Do not pet that cat! She will hurt you!” others would warn their friends.

I took this as my cue to saunter around the room, tail held up with pristine stature. I would stop at the feet of the oblivious and emit melodious purrs from my mouth, willing them to reach down with one of their flesh-padded palms for me to strike.

And strike I did, with unrelenting zest. Soon, the crowd forgot all about the child, and he retreated to his cage for an afternoon nap while I worked the room, scavenging drops of vittles as I went.

All in all, it turned out to be a good day.

*****

 November 2006: Marcy Is Thankful for Things

Currently, I’m enjoying the serene quiet now that the child napping. I really wish she wouldn’t leave the door to his bedroom shut, because I’d love to go in there and prove the folk lore true. Nothing beats baby breath for breakfast.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, yet another holiday that Father and I do not celebrate because the pilgrims were God-fearing assholes. Yet, there are things in this world that I appreciate.

What am I thankful for, you ask, dear diary? I am thankful for pestilence, poverty, and pollution. I am thankful for denigration, dismemberment, and death. I am grateful for W., war, and wholesale murder. Terrorism, thieving, and Tiananmen Square in 1989.

But mostly, I am thankful for the few hours of solitude I’ll get to lavish tomorrow when that bitch takes her wretched son to her grandmother’s house for dinner. I’ll get some privacy to work on my Nazi mural and some leftover turkey to gormandize once they return.

*****

Marcy’s Album Cover

I am a singer.

Yes, it’s true. My producer has likened me to a demonic Kylie Minogue, but I have moves like Beyonce. The only reason I am telling you this, diary readers, is because over the weekend, my likeness was captured in such a sultry pose, with slats of sunlight showering my fur, that I knew in an instant it would be my album cover.

Behold, Von Schlugenhusen’s Fuck My War, Kiss My Hate.

I have the skeletons of a few songs in demo-form, but I am not willing to share those with you, diary readers, for fear of a world-wide Internet leak. I’m still waiting to hear back from Dimmu Borgir and Mortiis, as I propositioned them for cameo appearances, and Charlie Manson promised he’d record something in the spoken-word vein, of which I can mix snippets into interludes. Then it’s off to Norway to record.

*****

October 2007: Marcy Makes a List

1. A piggy bank

2. A safe for my drugs and medallions

3. Stew

4. Winter parka

5. Stepstool

6. Guitar strings

What are: Things I can use that baby for after I slaughter him.

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