it's really just a beach town. right smack in the snowbelt.

Jake and I spent four days in Erie last weekend. Going home is always so weird and sad and happy and bizarre and blogworthy but I never know what to say or how to say it when I finally get a minute in front of my computer. How do you talk about the way your kid reacts to endless line of school buses that comes up Caughey at 2.30 in the afternoon? Or the way the snow falls at the end of March and sticks to everything for a whole entire day? Or what it is like to see a kid wearing a letter jacket from your high school? How about the fact that the only businesses that actually stay in business in that town are bars and motels? About how everyone keeps getting older in real life even though they stay young in your brain? I can't think of a way to describe how good the food is up there and how much I cram down my throat while I'm there. Salads have french fries on top! Sandwiches have french fries and cole slaw in them! French fries! Greek fries! Greek dogs! Greek sauce! Pizza subs! Perch sandwiches! Hot subs! Combo subs! House dressing! Ranch dressing! Chicken and biscuits! Gravy and biscuits! Pepperoni balls! Twist cones! You think you know what that stuff is, but you don't unless you've been to Erie. Everything is so exactly the same but entirely different than it was when I moved out way back in nineteen naughty four.

I thought I could spend a good portion of my weekend sleeping and doing nothing while my mom ran Jake around town to show him off to her friends. Not so much. I carted him around to see family and friends on Friday because my mom had to work. The nerve! I think I hit a low point when I was walking aimlessly around Walmart at 8.45am on a weekday because I was awake and bored and I needed a few things that weren't FAA-acceptable and I didn't want to brave the traffic on Upper Peach. Me, Jake, and a bunch of other moms and kids and old people, all selling our souls to save a buck. All I could think about was that this would totally be my life if I lived here. I was wearing the same clothes I wore the day before AND to bed, Jake was playing with a car that I didn't intend to buy yet took out of the package for him to play with (totally okay to do at Walmart, right?) so he would behave. My hair wasn't combed, my breath smelled like coffee and gum because my teeth were unbrushed, Jake had a smudge of something on his face, and I was surrounded by people who thought it was okay to leave the house without beltloops.

Repeat after me: Never leave your house without beltloops.

Oh, and remember when I said Jake never gets sick? And how I knocked on wood? I have a confession, I never knocked on wood and sure enough Jake ended up with a bad case of the pukes and poops on Saturday. Nothing worse than the old P&P's. Luckily my mom was there to help clean up. I have never in my life had to deal with someone else's sick (save for the newborn spit-ups) so it was really good to be able to scream for my mom when my kid was denotatively dripping with grossness. I wasn't cut out for that part of being a mother. My brother's car got the worst of it when Jake puked all over the backseat. The poor boy had to sit in a pool of his own vomit all the way from the nursing home where my grandmother, aunt, and uncle were waiting on us for a nice dinner down to my mom's house, saying "mommy, i puked. i puked in car. i sorry i puked in car. mommy, i hold you please. please". Have I ever written here about how Jake is a chronic apologist? It makes you feel really crappy when your two year-old apologizes for everything that goes wrong in the house and in the world, as if it is his fault. And when he wants you to hold him, he asks to hold you. How do you say no to that? His big eyes blink a few times and he puts his arms up and asks to hold you.

Gawh.

Anyway, Sunday was Payton's Shower and Adrienne got loads of stuff. Moms and Wives, remember that post-shower feeling of having all that crap in your house and no real place for it? I don't ever want to feel that way again. But I digress. Of course we were late because Jake wouldn't wake up for the world and we were on Puke Watch '08 during the whole thing but he did pretty well. We all took turns entertaining him and kept him confined to the back of the room so he wouldn't attack the gifts/cake/guests. Because he will. I know this because I've seen it happen.

Sunday night my mom made a giant pan of lasagna and bought an antipasto and had my aunts and uncles and two best friends from high school over. My brother was there and everything. The grownups sat in the living room and we kids sat at the table. It's nice to feel like you are fifteen again, even if your brat is sitting at the table with you, reminding you that you aren't.

Monday we flew back home. Jake puked on the plane. But it was totally okay because he puked in my hand and didn't get any on the lady sitting next to us or our clothes or the seat. In my hand, readers. In. My. Hand. He puked in my hand so it made everything okay.

This is my life.