So here’s the button should you want to vote for me. Should you NOT want to vote, I dig that too. It’s a simple process, hand to God.

I am also up for the other two Bloggers Choice Awards displayed so kindly on my sidebar, and should you want to go through the annoying registration, I would be most thrilled. If only so that I could beat Dooce, who wins everything.

I also wanted to let you know that–should you want to be bored stiff–I am on Facebook as I am a lemming. A stupid, stupid lemming. My full name is at the bottom of your screen. We should SO be BFF.

I am also on Flickr AND Twitter. Because of the aforementioned lemmingness.

————-

Okay, so that top shit was written this morning when I was anxiously awaiting the Early Intervention people.

Dave and I handle adverse situations differently. While I am busy wringing my hands and preparing myself for the worst possible outcome, he calmly expects the best of any given situation. I’m not exactly Chicken Little, instead I’m his cousin, Aunt Chicken The-Sky-Might-Fall-Soon-Better-Prepare-Now and while I do appreciate Daver’s rose colored glasses, honestly my way has proved to be more useful for me.

Neither way is either wrong or right.

Amelia had her meeting with the therapists this afternoon, and all week I’ve had a sort of heavy-rock-in-my-guts type feeling. Not because, you see, I was terribly concerned about what they would find–shocking, I know–but because, I guess, I didn’t know what was going to happen. Which to me is worse than the bad outcomes. Dave, on the other hand, was optimistic and unconcerned.

Today, I have to eat my words (with a side of fava beans): Amelia, it has been determined, is (so far) normal. Completely meeting her milestones, ripping ass and taking names. The therapists will be back in a couple months to reevaluate, because her diagnosis is an automatic qualifier for the program, but so far, she’s spectacularly…normal.

I’m so beyond thrilled that I’m in shock. Tonight, the champagne will flow freely, but today, I will simply gape, slack-jawed at my daughter. My principessa.

I’m not worthy.

Part I is here and Number B is here.

I’d tried to explain to Matt, after the initial upset, that I really just wasn’t that into him. But after he’d simply call me and breathe into the phone heavily, I gave up and stopped answering the phone altogether. I had a roommate who never left the room and an answering machine to catch any other calls, so I turned into sort of a telephone-a-phobe.

Which angered me greatly. Known for talking paint off walls, the forced exile of my phoneness made me feel trapped. Feeling trapped by some creepy guy with lips like two pieces of fleshy liver made me irate.

Working in my favor after awhile was my new boyfriend. Not because he had done or said anything to Matt, but because I now had one.

Matt got the hint. Matt also got angry.

Soon enough, I was back to my telephone-o-philic ways and felt free enough to call Matthias again without fear that Matt was going to burn down my dorm. It was concrete anyway, I reasoned, but I did try and make sure to call when Matt was at class.

One night, the lot of us were sitting around plotting a trip with our new fake ID’s to the local college bar, and we decided to see if Matthias wanted to come along with us. I picked up the phone, dialed and was dismayed when Matt answered. Never one to back down even when I should, I asked to speak to Matthias.

“He’s not here,” Matt spat and slammed the phone down.

“Fucker hung up on me!” I said angrily, depressing the off button while my face flushed scarlet. “What a fucking dill-bag!” I’d been prepared to let the whole I’m-stalking-you-creepily-thing go and let bygones be fucking bygones, but now? All bets were off.

“Let me try,” Pashmina Stimpy (her name is STIMPY. I was Ren, she was STIMPY on our old blog.) took the phone forcibly out of my clenched fist. She dialed the number.

“Hi, this is Stimpy, can I please speak to Matthias?” She used her most professional sounding voice which made me crack up. She listened for a moment and then hung up. “Dude. He hung up on me, too!”

Oh hell no.

The phone was passed to Stimpy’s roommate who called. “Hi, this is Stimpy’s roommate,” she said cheerfully, “Is Matthias available?” I was beet-red, trying to stop the laughter. “Oh FUCK no,” she said as she hung up. “Dickhole hung up on me too!”

James, an RA from the guys floor below was next. “Hi Matt,” he chirped, cheerful as a clam. “This is James!!! Is Matthias there??” He practically bubbled the last sentence through the phone managing, I noticed jealously, to sound entirely sincere while doing so.

After Matt hung up on him too, we all were roaring with laughter. They’d all kept me away from Matt’s creepiness for months before and were suitably freaked out by him. But not, obviously, freaked out enough to have some fun.

The lot of us ran down the hall to my room where we persuaded Vanessa, my roommate, who was also well aware of the antics of Matt’s weirdness, to call. Like everyone before her, she was hung up on. My sides ached from laughing and the tears had wet the front of my shirt completely.

But now we’d run out of people to call him, so we headed back to Stimpy’s room to have a smoke and decide what to do next after James did my makeup so that I could pass as a 28 year old Greek chick (I was 19 and not even close to Greek). I ended up looking somewhat like a transvestite, but it was only appropriate. Calling Matt had left us all in a punchy mood, so we giggled like schoolgirls at everything.

It was Stimpy, I think, who had the next brilliant idea. And it was a brilliant one.

“Hand me the phone,” she commanded to James, who handed it over, mystified. She grabbed it and dialed while we stared at her. What the hell was she doing now?

“Hey Matt, this is Stimpy,” she cheerfully reintroduced herself. “Hey, I’d just called, and I know I asked if Matthias could call me back but, you know, I’m going out to the library now, so you don’t have to tell him I called.”

I told you it was brilliant.

One by one, we called back, asking Matt to ignore our previous request to have Matthias call us as we were all going out somewhere or another. By the time it was my turn, he’d taken the phone sadly off the hook.

The best part of the entire situation was that Matt now avoided each and every one of us like we were diseased plague-ridden rats. We’d see him walk past The Ashtray–which we were trying to fill with butts–and wave wildly, and he’d turn the other way, pretending not to see us or answer our frantic “HI MATT’s!!”

He never bothered me again.

Mature? No. Highly entertaining? Abso-fucking-lutely.

———

Stalker stories? College stories? BRING IT.

Part I is here.

And there’s this:

My plea to you to help me try and not be spanked so badly out there. They won’t spam you, and all you have to do is enter your email! It’s simple to vote and damn, I know you’re out there, my sweet lurkers. Why don’t you come out of the dark? I won’t bite!

So there we were, sitting there, Pashmina, Matthias, Pashmina’s roommate and I. Newly minted members of The Loyola University Polo club. After a brief moment of congratulating ourselves on an idea well played, the idea was shoved back away to make room for more pressing issues: namely, would my roommate break the Bubble Chair again?

(answer–although the suspense would be grand– Yes. Like me, Vanessa didn’t seem to learn from her mistakes)

The fall pressed on as Matthias searched high and low for stables and horses the rest of us just sort of forgot about the Polo Club. But we were still often in each others’ company.

One mid-winter Friday night, Matthias invited the lot of us to his apartment which felt so grown-up and urban after living in the shoe boxes we referred to as The Maxi Pad (why yes, we did think we were clever!) for wine and pasta. Oh! How Continental we all felt! We also felt like alcoholics, as we’d each gotten a bottle of wine to bring with, making the total bottles of wine somewhere near 7.

Dinner was eaten off paper plates and the wine was happily dug into by all of us, including Matthias’s roommate, Matt. Whomever had paired them together was obviously a joker.

Wine has, and probably always will, in addition to making me swell up like the Michelin Man, gotten me hammered as fuck.

So, we were ALL suitably toasty when we started to play a game, sitting there on the floor passing the wine bottles around. The game was, of course, a favorite of mine: Truth of Mother-fucking Dare. There’s very little I won’t do or won’t answer truthfully (a blessing AND a curse), so I was stoked.

The game, as we were all 19 or so, immediately took a sexual tone. Someone answered describing losing their virginity, someone else discussed fantasies, and I’m pretty sure that someone streaked, but my memory is suitably foggy. Eventually, it was my turn.

The question must have been something or another about The Sex, for the life of me, I don’t remember the specifics, but my answer was, in drunken drawl, “I *snort* I dunno. I *hic* just like *hic* sex.”

It was a most unfortunate choice of words that I would pay for for months after.

Because Matthias’s roommate lit up like a Christmas tree. We’d been talking earlier because I am chatty and I could tell he thought I was cute (obvs: wine goggles), but there was no interest on my part. He just wasn’t my type.

But between the stupid comment about sex (to be fair, the rest of the comments were much, much more raunchy, and had I been any less drunk, I’d have been more descriptive) and the fact that I responded to him in a conversation, he was smitten by the time the night was over.

In yet another gigantic error in judgement, we’d made plans to hang out the following weekend when we were both home as we’d discovered we lived in the same hometown. By the time that weekend rolled around, and I was home, I had no real desire to hang with him and told him as much when he called my parents’ house. I wasn’t being unkind, just wanted to see my other hometown friends. I forgot to call him back and promptly forgot that I’d forgotten.

This, apparently, was the Wrong Thing to do. Because when I returned to school the following Sunday, my roommate informed me that someone “named Matt had called about 10 times.” She looked a little freaked out. I felt a little freaked out.

Over the next week or two, he called non-stop and had taken to hanging outside around our dorm, his eyes glinting creepily as he scanned the crowds for me. Maybe he just wanted to sell me some Amway, maybe he wanted to tell me that he’d discovered the key to world peace, maybe he wanted to give me a check for a million dollars. I won’t ever be sure.

Because the constant calling and skulking about the Ashtray (the gigantic fountain in the middle of the quad, outside of our dorm. Seen from above, it looked like, you guessed it, a large, concrete ashtray) had made me skittery and nervous with a touch of anger thrown in for good measure. Because now I couldn’t even call Matthias without fear that Matt would pick up and tell me that he’d been sacrificing kittens in my name.

He was just that kind of guy.

Part III will air tomorrow. Sorry, y’all.

You totally want to vote for me again! It’s EASY! Because you can vote DAILY until July 6, at which point I will stop shamelessly begging you. Also: you can make me do shit for you if you vote for me. But not BJ’s. Because THAT would be weird and uncomfortable.

Many, many years ago, before I was Your Aunt Becky, before I was Mrs. The Daver, and before I was mother to my three crotch parasites, I was Super Student Becky Overachiever, Esq. One night, I packed up all my shit into my friend Scott’s purple Neon and we drove off into the sunset. Or, more accurately, to my new school.

Yes kids, that’s right: Aunt Becky Does College.

A sunny fall afternoon, I sat on a bench outside of the science building where I was catching a quick smoke while listening to my well loved copy of 40 Oz To Freedom on my discman (that’s what we had before we had iPods, kiddos), enjoying the cool breeze from Lake Michigan and wondering if I had enough cash to grab a bottle of vodka after class. Some things, they never change.

I’d noticed that a slim, neatly dressed guy had sat down while I smoked–this was also back in the days before people mandated smoke free benches–but hadn’t thought beyond that. I looked about, stubbing my butt out on the concrete, craning my neck to see if I could see what time it was.

I didn’t want to be late for Calculus as my raging bitch of a professor (her name was Dr. Funk. Which, honest to God, is the coolest name ever for the world’s least pleasant person. Let’s just say I’d still kill for that name.) hated me. Finally, as I realized that I was in the one spot at school WITHOUT a clock nearby, I noticed a large Swiss watch on my bench-mate.

I took off my headphones and asked the guy what time it was.

“It’s 2:45,” he informed me, with an accent of indiscriminate origin. He paused a moment as I nodded my thanks, “Or how would you say that? Quarter to three?”

“That works,” I smiled at him.

He stuck out his hand to me and introduced himself, “I’m Matthias, nice to meet you.”

I shook his hand and replied, “I’m Becky, nice to meet you.”

In that matter, Aunt Becky met Matthias.

———-

Matthias, it turned out, was from Switzerland–my earlier snobby summation of his watch had been unfailingly spot-on–and was, just as I was, new in town. Although we had no classes together, we quickly fell in as fast friends, and were often in each other’s company.

One afternoon, Matthias had come up to my dorm floor, where I lived with Pashmina and my roommate Vanessa. Should you want to read The Vanessa Chronicles, I suggest here, here, here and here.

(As though you don’t have anything better to do)

Pashmina, her roommate, Matthias and I were all sitting in Pashmina’s room, eating shitty Chinese food from the place down the street that you could spend $5 and get food for a week (you’d also get acute GI distress for that $5 but hey, we were young) and Matthias started in on Why Europe Is Better Than The States. It wasn’t as though he didn’t care for the states–he did–but same way that I find the whole WC/sink-in-another-room thing odd, he found many of our customs equally strange.

Namely, the fact that our school, even with it’s billion and a half dollar tuition, didn’t have a Polo club. Matthias was outraged, and even mentioning that we were in the city where horses didn’t exactly roam free, could dissuade his bewilderment.

So, he the next thing he suggested was that we start our own Polo club.

I have to backtrack a bit, Dear Reader, so that you understand who he was talking to.

While I personally love a romp at the gym–hello endorphins–I don’t much care for competitive sports, especially ones that involve balls being thrown at my face. See, I don’t win, I’ll never win, and although I’m not a sore loser, being The Loser gets old after 20 or so years.

Pashmina is and was back then a swimmer by nature, which, like the elliptical, is a sport best enjoyed alone. Besides, even then (she’s still one of my best friends), I knew how frighteningly competitive she was and there was no way in hell I would compete with her for anything.

And honestly, the only sport we’d get picked to play on back then would have been a Competitive Smoke-A-Thon.

If that doesn’t clear it up for you, let me try this: remember The Wedding Singer? At the wedding when Adam Sandler mentions the “mutants at table 9” and the camera pans over so you see a table full of gangly weirdos?

We were the table 9 of sports. So the prospect of putting us on horses and doing whatever it is that you do in polo was absurd at best.

We each agreed immediately.

This was how I became Vice President of a polo club at age 19.

Part II will air tomorrow.

You’d be shocked–and probably dismayed–to learn that there are a number of companies who want nothing more than to have me put my seal of approval on their product and then TELL YOU ABOUT IT. I’m personally shocked that any company would want anything to do with me, but you know.

Marketing to Mommy Bloggers is the new black, donchaknow? While I appreciate that many people do enjoy writing about the newest hot luscious cleaning apparatus, there’s a very real part of me that would feel kinda oogly about the whole thing.

It’s just not my bag, baby. It’s not to say that if a cool product was given to me, I wouldn’t endorse it, but I don’t think I need to do the work of a marketing company for them. Not without more compensation than a $10 product.

But I digress.

Occasionally, an opportunity to review something DOES come my way and while I am to fat (currently) to jump on it, I certainly THINK lazily about meandering towards it.

Like my friend Chris’s book: Pacify Me: A Handbook For The Freaked Out New Dad. First, he’s a friend and how fucking cool is it that I have a friend who has written a book (okay, I have a couple friends who have written–and published–books because they are cooler than I am)? And Part B, I sort of owe him*.

While we ladies have such humorous books as Naptime is the New Happy Hour and Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay (also written by a friend because I tend to keep friends that are cooler than me), not to mention the Girlfriend’s Guides (to everything kid-related), dads are kind of given the short end of the stick.

Okay, let me rephrase that: Dads are TOTALLY shafted.

I guess the transition to fatherhood is supposed to be seamless or something, which is such fucking bullshit. Sure, the dudes don’t (presumably) get stretch marks or heavy boobies, but still, going from 0 -> 1 kid is a Big Ass Deal. Don’t let anyone tell you differently, because they are lying and if you believe them, I have this Nigerian Prince I know.

Fatherhood, is a Big Ass Deal.

Sometimes, you need a friend along the way to humorously guide you along while making obscure references to movies that I’ll probably never see because I am not a dude. Luckily, The Daver (who has approximately 3 minutes of free time each week) plucked Pacify Me out of my hands the moment I unwrapped it. He swears that “it rules” and “he wished that he’d read it before our babies were born.”

Dave was planning to do this review for me, but he’s also planning on building me flower boxes I’ll build myself and considering buying a new hose I’ll need to go buy. Like I said: he has no free time.

It’s a great book, a light, fun read, and I’m pretty sure every dad I know would get a kick out of it. So, you want a copy, you clamor? OF COURSE YOU DO.

Leave a comment and I’ll randomly select someone for whom I will BRAVE THE POST OFFICE FOR (I have a phobia, okay?). I’ll even fake his autograph! Consider, o yee who will win this, as a freebie Father’s Day gift! No need to go buy another ugly tie! Win, WIN! Contest ends June 14 at 11:59 PM.

If you don’t win (boo!), his book is available on Amazon. He also blogs over here at Daddy Needs Some Alone Time.

*I’m building up to something here. My 7th grade English teacher would call this “dramatic foreshadowing.” She would also be horrified that I referenced her in my blog here because she was a HUGE bitch, but what can you do? Free country and all.

And hey, you’re still here? Why don’t you go vote for me? You can vote EVERY DAY until July 6 at which point I will stop shamelessly begging for votes.

I’m in the running for Funniest Blog and while I won’t win, I will hassle you to vote for me. Because you can vote daily and that rules the school.

——————

As part of the requirement to get into nursing school (other requirements at my school included: a general bad attitude and the disregard for others), I had to enroll–and pass–Anatomy and Physiology I and II. And as part of A & P I and II, we had a weekly lab practicum. In addition to a nifty cadaver and an actual skeleton (now they are often made of hard plastic), my professor had somehow acquired a brain.

Now and again, he’d pull it out and leave it on the front lab bench. It would float there in it’s glass house, suspended in a clear yellow liquid almost as though it were another member of the class, nodding along. Because my professor had a great sense of humor, he’d labeled it years before with a fading sticker that read: “Abby Matter.”

It was a nerdy Young Frankenstein joke, he explained when I asked, wondering if the name was of the brain’s previous owner.

So to pay tribute to him, I have begun the process of labeling all the entries that involve me whining about Amelia’s encephalocele “Abby Matter.”

In a valiant effort to distract myself from myself, I tried my daughter on solids this morning now that she is the same age as my son’s were when they tried solids for the first time. I was sad to note that the formula, unlike breast milk, does not digest those simple carbohydrates the same way, so the longer it sat, the more it stayed the same.

Amelia was…not thrilled by the idea. Maybe she was picking up on the grimace I was no doubt making as I tried to feed her the paste-like rice cereal, maybe she just has better sensibilities than her brothers, but she was less than thrilled by the entire experience.

What I have not been talking about, though, is that Amelia’s Early Intervention interview with the therapists begins on Friday afternoon. I am less than thrilled by this idea, even though I keep reminding myself over and over than so many kids have problems so much greater than hers and that I should just shut the fuck up.

The marked rigidity of her limbs could just be a further sign of her awesomeness and her readiness to take on the world, but I’ll admit to you, Internet, that my heart breaks a little every time I see the strange Frankenstein way she uses her arms sometimes. Is this something? Is this nothing?

I’m just not sure.

I’m just not sure.

Now to those of you who are worried that I might be merely posting boring pictures of my garden, let me assure you that this is exactly what I am doing. But (always a butt with me), just like a shitty after school special, there is a moral. Although, not in a Jerry Springer Let’s Have A Moment way.

Also, can you vote for me? Please? Pretty please with a nutsack on top? It will help my fragile ego churn out less boringest posts. Vote here and here and here. I’ll make out with you.

The first link is to a brand new award that someone cooler than me nominated this blog for.

And I want to hump them for it. Thank you.

First, let me show you my rose bush:

Okay, so this is my climbing rose bush. I planted it last year in the midst of my miscarriages as I find gardening to be nearly as cathartic as beating people senseless with my fists of fury. Because gardening means less jail time!

Felonies or not, this rose bush is insanely awesome and healthy looking. It’s far bigger and better than it should be.

But wait…what’s that pipe say? I can…hardly…make…it out.

OH EM GE.

My rose is fracking radioactive!

So that’s the way it is in my family.

Like many other kids on the autistic spectrum, Ben had various and sundry food issues. For probably 3 or 4 years, he’d eat nothing but his White Food Diet. This included AND was limited to: saltine crackers, graham crackers and oatmeal.

Ben was the only kid I knew who had to be forced to try a Chicken McNugget or a slice of pizza, and while you’d probably say to me, “Aunt Becky, why didn’t you try to make him eat something more healthy?” I’d tell you, Gentle Reader, that I’d already tried in vain. That kid food, Gentle Reader, was my best bet for getting him to realize that stuff outside of his diet was a-okay and wouldn’t cause him to explode (or whatever he thought would happen).

Food Issues just became a normal everyday part of my life and we learned to deal with it. Sure, it was (and still is) frustrating, but what can you do? Ben is loads better now than he once was.

Ben says, “Stop, in the name of FOOD.”

Alex was born when Ben was five and by then, many of his eccentricities had been worked out and turned into mere quirks (thank you Occupational Therapy!). Unlike his brother, I have a distinct feeling that Alex would have happily crawled from the womb and found his way up to the boob to eat, had I not been so easily able to expel him through my magnificent pushing prowess.

Alex + Food = True Love

Like clockwork, right about 4 months of age, Alex began to take a decided interest in table food, and the first time I put a spoon with my low-cal, super-fake-sugary yogurt and dipped it into his mouth, he was enraptured (I know. By YOGURT. Ew). I quickly dashed to the store and bought him some full fat, no fake-sugar yogurt, which he devoured by the 6-pack.

(also, could Alex and Amelia look any more alike?)

I.was.thrilled.

I had grandiose ideas of having dinners that didn’t taste like cardboard! Dinners that had VARIETY! Dinners that I might be excited to eat! Dinner time, thanks to some peer pressure, might actually cease to be a nightly battle!

Did someone say BACON?

Not so, little grasshopper, not bloody so.

What I hadn’t taken into consideration when I happily pulled my cookbooks from their dusty shelves, is that Alex is the most willful person you have ever met. So the minute the Terrible One’s (now followed by the Terrible Two’s) reared it’s ugly head, food was a battle once again.

Without the sensory issues, but with the iron clad will of a thousand tons of platinum, Alex will simply refuse to eat. He can be presented with the most succulent, delicious morsel of filet, and if he is a particularly obstinate mood (which happens to be 99.9% of the time), he will throw it angrily to the dogs. Or at my head. It’s a battle of the wills with Alex.

Simply put: I’ve given (mostly) up. Not because I really want to admit that I’ve been broken by a two year old whom I outweigh by over 100 pounds, but because I’m just too tired to care. You don’t want to eat? Don’t eat then.

Dinners are once again made of cardboard, the cookbooks gather mold and moss, and I just sigh melodramatically whenever I imagine the foods that other kids will eat. With Alex, it’s not a sensory thing, it’s a control thing and I’ve heard somewhere this is common with toddlers.

So, I say, fuck it. I’m tired of trying to sneak broccoli into mac and cheese only to have one of them notice and refuse it. I appreciate that Jessica What’s-Her-Face wrote a cookbook that suggests great ways to get kids to eat their veggies, I say great. Good for her. My kids? Will notice.

Perhaps this is my comeuppance for dressing the kid like a hot dog.

Someday, they will broaden their horizons and until then? They can eat like freaks. I’ll fill in their nutritional gaps as best as I can with Carnation Instant Breakfast and vitamins.

Alex and an edamame regarded each other for a time in silence. ‘Who are you?’ Asked Alex. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation.

It seems that in addition to my color blindness, I have also inherited a vast fortune of guilt. It doesn’t matter what it is, if it’s possible to feel badly about something, I do. Hell, I’ve been known to feel badly about things that are IMpossible to feel guilt about.

Let me put it this way: if I am in a store, and I see the rent-a-cop whizzing by, certain to arrest some flagrant shoplifter or teenage smoker, my initial thought is not, “Man, sucks to be YOU,” but “OHMYGOD, DID I DO SOMETHING WRONG? Is it possible I shoplifted while maybe I blacked out in the tampon aisle?”If it appears obnoxious to you in print, I assure you in person it is much worse.

For someone who is as sensitive as a toad, this is odd behavior, but it’s MY odd behavior, dammit.

But because I am usually half-way up the cross about something-or-another-like-that-chocolate-chip-cookie-I-ate-while-I’m-supposed-to-be-dieting, when someone else attempts guilt as a motivator or as a way to make me feel worse about something, I get fucking furious.

On Sunday, I was sitting around wondering why The Internet wasn’t entertaining me like it should be and sort-of missing The Daver with all my heart and soul, the doorbell rang. My neighborhood is full of kids and I have kids of my own, so while I find the ringing of the tinny bells annoying as fcuk, it’s a necessary evil.

I was feeding Amelia a bottle so I carried her to the front door, hoping it wasn’t The Mormons whom I just didn’t have the energy to fend off. When I opened it, I saw a kid of indiscriminate teenage to twenties age. My heart sunk as I saw the pamphlet in his hand.

Kid: “Hello, ma’am, I’m conducting an experiment and my goal for the day is to talk to 150 nice people. Are you a nice person?”

Aunt Becky: (looking around for a hidden camera) “Uh, I guess?”

Kid: “Your neighbor 2 doors down is a nice person. I just talked to her. I’m just trying to meet nice people.”

Aunt Becky: “Uh. Okay.”

Kid: “It’s my assignment, to see if I can meet nice people.”

Aunt Becky (dim lightbulb lights up. Oh, so this is like those bags of flour kids in high school had to carry around to act like they had babies. Note to Child Development teachers: a bag of flour is nothing like a baby.): “Okay.”

Kid: “blah, blah, blah, blah.”

Aunt Becky: (nods head apprehensively. She is no longer listening because she is bored shitless but trying to be nice. Having an assignment of going door-to-door sucks balls.).

(she looks around for clipboard to sign to say that this kid talked to her)

Kid: “So, if you’re a nice person, and obviously you are, I’m selling magazines. The first prize to whoever sells the most is a trip to ….(ed note: somewhere boring). The second prize is $5,000.”

Aunt Becky now notices that the kid is probably closer to her age than she’d thought.

Kid: “I’m planning on going to ….(ed note: some school I’d never heard of) and I’m going to put the $5,000 towards school.”

Aunt Becky now calls bullshit. This is no college kid.

He thrusts the magazine card at her. “Would you like to buy a subscription?”

Aunt Becky thinks that her subscription to The Atlantic is due to be renewed soon, so she looks to see if it’s on there. Surprise, surprise, it’s not. There is, however, a subscription to Diabetes Monthly.

Well thank God.

Aunt Becky: “Nah, I don’t see anything I want. Thanks.”

Late 20’s Loser Selling Magazines Door-to-Door: “Well, if you don’t want anything, you should do what I think is the best idea. You should give a subscription to …(ed note: some children’s hospital I’ve not heard of). So the SICK, DYING kids can read magazines.”

Aunt Becky: “Uh yeah, NO THANKS.”

Late 20’s Loser Selling Magazines Door-to-Door: “Come on, not for the DYING SICK kids? They want magazines!”

Aunt Becky firmly shuts the door, laughing.

——————

I may be full of guilt, but I was not born yesterday.

I was born Tuesday.

The Daver works one of those jobs where he’s ALWAYS working. I don’t mean that in the flip sort of oh-my-God-I-have-to-work-until-6-PM-AGAIN kind of way; I mean it in the very real you-better-never-get-attached-to-the-idea-of-a-spouse way. It took quite an adjustment for me, who had been used to the idea that a job came with occasional overtime, but overall, after you clocked out, you were done.

Not so for The Daver’s job. At any moment in time, and I do mean ANY moment, work can send an email and he will have to drop whatever he’s doing and go fight some nerdy fire. Most often this occurs when I am having a meltdown or the kids are driving me insane (perhaps the two are related?) or at the MOST inconvenient time possible. I had to physically pry Dave’s Blackberry from his hand while our babies were born.

I used to be infuriated by this. How DARE they take him from me when I am having A Moment? How could they POSSIBLY know when the worst possible time to require the eyes of ONLY Dave was? Anger gave way to a quiet resignation several years ago and I now merely roll my eyes when work takes up one of my weekend days–the only time I am able to get shit done–and move the hell on with my life.

But the prospect of losing the hour of help each day that I have another human being who is capable of taking care of one of the children left me cold and in dire need of a meaty hug. I often can only get through the day knowing that by 7 or 8, I will have another set of hands to take over for me, should I have to do something as inconsiderate as taking a poo.

I know, how DARE I have to move my bowels?

In a stunning fit of brilliance, Daver asked my sister-in-law to come stay with us while he was away. This meant that now, rather than having to wait until late evening or weekends to Get Stuff Done, it’s now possible for me to go and plant the hydrangea that I couldn’t resist purchasing even though I had no real spot to put it.

(hello run on sentence! How I’ve missed you!)

It’s entirely safe to say that I have gotten more done in the past few days than I have in months. Years, maybe. I’d tell you what I’ve done, but you might die of boredom, so I will merely leave you with this cautionary tale.

The people whom we’d bought our house from three and a half years ago weren’t what I would call House People. They finished my basement and replaced all the doors, but didn’t see fit to trim the 3 lilacs in front or try and tame the Rose Bush of Doom in my back yard. This was made worse by the people whom they had bought the house from who were House People. Specifically, they were Landscaping People.

Bought, I’m sure when the bushes and trees were tiny, every single inch of the front of my house is neatly landscaped with variations of trees and bushes. Aside from a couple of the squat evergreen type-y bushes, I like it all.

Problem is that landscaping like that requires upkeep greater than simply watching as it overtakes the yard. So I inherited quite a mess when I moved in. The rose bush I eventually tamed could likely have been in the Guinness Book of World Records for Least Beautiful Rose On The Planet.

The whole house had taken on a look of being owned by some creepy recluse who was happy to have all of the windows covered by overgrown shrubbery.

Lest the people who drive past think that I am that creepy recluse (shut up), I’ve made a weekly effort to trim that fucker the fuck down. And I’m not sure that you’d notice, but the 12 or 13 bags of lawn refuse would say differently.

On Saturday before Dave left, he gave me the afternoon off so that I could take care of some business in the yard. Including taming this bush-tree thing that was beginning to resemble a koosh ball on speed.

But because I am short, it’s no easy feat. It requires that I essentially get the whole tree into a bear hug and pull down branches to trim several feet of length off so that it stops scraping against the house. As I was in the middle of doing this, I realized that with every lop of my choppers, I was being coated in a fine dust of…something. After I’d done most of it, I realized that the dust-stuff was causing my chest to erupt in a delicious constellation of hives.

And because I am not only stupid but a masochist too, I finished the damn job before I went inside to survey the damage. I lubed up my burning, itchy skin with some topical cream or another (thankfully, I was NOT allergic to that, although this would have made the story funnier) and tried to think non-itchy thoughts.

About 20 minutes later, we had to go across the street to a birthday party for Alex’s friend Zach. Praying that 20 minutes was enough time for me to look less diseased, I prepared for the best and eventually, thanks to the anti-itch cream, forgot about my delicate oozing chest situation.

It wasn’t until we showed up at the party and I began to receive decidedly cold looks as parents shooed their children away from mine did I realize that perhaps something was wrong with me. After I had Daver check for bats in my belfry (none present, sir), I was stumped. Then, sheepishly, Dave pointed out gently that maybe my weeping, red, crusty chest might have something to do with the looks I was getting.

He was right and we left immediately. To prove that I never learn my lesson, upon surveying that I had missed a patch on the bush of crusty, itchy doom, I grabbed my loppers and hugged that bush right up, further intensifying both my sheer stupidity and my histamines.

I’d say something like “you live, you learn” but obviously I do not.

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What can you not ever manage to learn, Internet?