Back when I was in high school, I lived far enough away from the campus that I had two lone options to get to school. I could:

a) Take the bus, which was amusing mainly because people were always smoking hitters of Mary-J. This was a shining example of the coveted Wake -n- Bake.

b) Con my way into getting rides from other people as my parents refused to buy me a car of my own. Something about polluting the environment or something. I don’t know, I wasn’t listening. Damn hippies.

Since St. Charles is sprawling enough that although I didn’t live by school, I had many friends who REALLY didn’t live by school, and since, I convinced them, I was pretty much on the way, why didn’t they just stop by and pick me up?

A whole band of kids would pile into someone or another’s small ass two-door car, and off we would go to school. We’d purposefully leave even earlier than we needed to so that we could drive in concentric circles around the school, getting closer and closer until we finally arrived. This may have been the only time in my life that I’ve willingly gotten up earlier than necessary.

Why the hell did we do this? In retelling this, I don’t really know.

We’d listen to Sublime’s Sublime, or Led Zeppelin’s Houses Of The Holy, or even a sweet ass mix tape, we’d smoke as many cigarettes as we possibly could, clam-baking the car. Sometimes we’d play Student Driver and overreact like hell to random things like a Fire Hydrant, and drive slowly in the middle of the road, hands at 10 and 2, feigning intense concentration.

I guess we did it because we could. And why not?

In my senior year, due to some intense over-crowding, the school system had built a second campus, called, for lack of anything smarter The North Building. I’m certain you can guess why.

My first class happened to be in the North Building, so the Band of Merry Pranksters would gallantly drop me off there first before eking out a parking spot. Before I’d emerge from the car in a cloud of smoke and classic rock, we’d often spot one of our classmates trudging dutifully to the North Building, his monogrammed backpack slung jauntily across his back.

And without fail, we’d slip in Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits Album and crank it as loud as the speakers would allow, roll down the windows and scream, “STEEVVVEEE MILLLLLERR!” Half of us would hang our bodies out the window as we screamed this at him, waving frantically and exaggeratedly to him.

He’d look up at us, obviously stunned, as he was a really quiet kind of guy, and wave back at us tentatively. Almost shy.

I can only assume that the kid was named by parents who had lived under a rock for years, because seriously? Neither name is bad, by itself or together, but you hear the name “Steve Miller” and you can’t help but start to whistle “The Joker.”

Again, the obvious question here is why the hell did we do this? And the only answer I can give you is that I don’t know.

We certainly weren’t being mean or malicious or anything resembling that. None of us were like that then nor are we like that now.

I guess we did it because we could.

And as for good old Steve, who was always such a good sport? He got the last laugh: I think he went to Harvard or something.

Steve Miller, indeed.

After waking up from a particularly delicious dream in which I was a female member of a biker gang but being wooed by the Leader of the Pack (apparently, in my dreams, I live in the 1950’s), I was all set to have a Good Day.

After being persuaded to join the Darkside (a.k.a. Facebook), I was all pumped to see who would have come crawling out of the woodwork last night while I slept (apparently this does happen). Then I would have a breakfast of food, glorious, glorious food (can I tell you how much I heart food right now?) and potentially cure fatness or baldness.

Yeah, not so much.

I present to you, my Shit List for today, Wednesday August Something or Another.

*My fence, which was probably excellent at containing small critters to my backyard many years ago before it decided to fall the shit apart. We have a new hole, a new AUGGIE sized hole in it, to match the other 4,000 I’ve already makeshiftedly patched. With classy things like kitty litter buckets and potted plants.

*Auggie. Who, after my nasty blog post, decided to miraculously stop peeing on the carpet and become a Good Dog. Until, that is, he finds an open hole in the fence and boogies on outside. Where I chased him around in my bare feet BEFORE I’d even had my caffeine. Now my feet are bruised and bloody and Auggie? Where he goes next, NOBODY knows. Seriously, I gave up on the little shit to come inside and left him out there. AFTER A HALF AN HOUR OF CHASING HIM AROUND IN MY PJ’S.

(He did come in eventually).

*People who call themselves “friends” only to come around when they need a shoulder to cry on. I have no use for this sort of behavior and will no longer tolerate it.

*My carpet. Because seriously, what idiot puts WHITE carpet in a house?

*The cat pee smell from my basement. I can’t find the location, so I can’t properly clean it, AND since it’s below ground, I can’t exactly “air it out.” Any suggestions?

All right, you’ve listened to me long enough. My turn to cluck sympathetically. What’s upsetting YOU today?

Through the daily life of what I like to call Alex’s obsession with his mother, I am unable to walk outside of his sight for more than about 0.5 a second. I posted about it before, close to a year ago and things haven’t changed much in that time.

While it’s highly flattering since my first born can barely be swayed to acknowledge me, it has some unexpected side effects. Namely, Alex has discovered The Internet.

It all started innocently enough with watching a video of Maddie, my friend Heather’s daughter. She happened to be laughing like a loon–Maddie, not Heather–and this only solidified Alex’s love for her. Now, he frequently comes up to me while I’m sitting on the computer and demands “Baby.”

We’ve watched that video so much (sorry, Heather) that she’s going to be convinced that we’re hiding out somewhere in her front yard, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Elusive Maddie. You know, like those nature documentary people do?

Thankfully, Alex has also begun requesting that we go see “Kitties” at I Can Haz Cheeseburger, as well, so the video does get an occasional break.

In a fit of quiet desperation (I could probably act out this particular video BY HEART now), I searched You Tube for videos of both “cows mooing” and “kitties meowing.”

(as an aside, how sad is it that THIS is now what I watch on You Tube. No more “Penis Cake” or “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” (same difference, right?) for me. No, NO, it’s now all about REALLY G-rated things now. O! How the mighty have fallen!)

Well, watching animals behave like animals is as close to Heaven as Alex can get. He takes after his mother in his love of all animals, his first word being “Kitty” and his favorite place on the planet being the zoo (altho I don’t like the zoo, truth be told)

He sits there in my lap, slack jawed and smiling at the computer monitor. And for one moment, his face bathed in the computer-y and pixilated glow, just one moment, I can see Dave’s geekiness in him. Especially the slack jawed part.

With the prospect of having some of my stories being not only for public consumption but also for purchase, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about names. Specifically, my own name.

I’ve been blogging for years now, although not always here on Mommy Wants Vodka, and I’ve made no real effort to hide who I am. I mention my hometown (St. Charles, Illinois), my name (Aunt Becky), my husband (The Daver) and my children (Alex and Ben), and I’m not sorry about it. Plenty of my friends in real life and in the computer read my blog, and even if they don’t comment, I know that they are here.

My parents do not read my blog, not because they don’t know about it, but because they never ask. Besides, I write here just like I speak in real life (without the parenthesis and flagrant usage of commas, of course) so none of this is new to them. They did raise me after all, and are pretty accustomed to my colorful ways of describing things. Like my vagina.

Plenty of people feel really strongly about blogging anonymously, for some valid reasons and some not so valid reasons, and I totally get behind that. Especially if you’re talking trash about people or subjects you don’t care to tell the whole world about it makes sense.

I was reading in the new issue of Wired, one of my favorite magazines (also in this issue: How To Become An Internet Superstar. Interestingly, the highlighted person I had never heard of) about this new project called the Personal Genome Project. What was the most interesting thing I found that I would care to discuss here (I’m a bit of a genetics geek, so the whole article kinda gave me a boner) was that if you go to this website, you can read about Philip Church. Ad nauseum.

Why the hell would someone disclose so freaking much about himself? Simple. Like me, he thinks that this sort of trivia is meaningless, something completely uninteresting to the average person.

This is precisely WHY I would and frequently do disclose as much as I do. What are you going to do, stalk me? Steal my dog with bladder control issues or my cat with a crusty ass? Be my guest. My life is pretty dull. Sometimes I tell good stories, sometimes I attract drama, sometimes I don’t.

So, hi, Internet. My name is Becky Sherrick Harks and this is my blog. Nice to meet you all.

And no, not one of those men is my husband.

Your turn. Why do you blog anonymously or not?

Macrocephalic. Buckethead. Orange-On-A-Toothpick. Satellite.

All words I’ve used to describe my children and their heads. I’d like to point out and be correct that the reason for their enormous melon’s would be related to their father-age, but since the common denominator between them both is me, I’d have to say that the likely culprit who unwittingly passed the genetics to create craniums that should have their own zip code is myself.

While I don’t call myself a “Baseball Head” or “Pinhead” or anything, I like to think that my own head is not overly large. Mainly because it’s not. It’s just that some of my *ahem* family members (my older brother and my mother for example) have heads that planets could orbit. Guess I should be glad that I only inherited the family pot belly, right?

It was, sadly enough, with this Implement of Destruction that my youngest child caused the intense pain that I happen to be in. I’m accustomed to dodging swinging heads as they come toward my person, but I happened to be too close to correctly remove myself from their path of deconstruction.

Alexander, the only child who I can make snuggle me without a tangible bribe, was sitting on my lap the other day, alternating between snuggling me and trying to stick his fingers up my nose, when it happened. He swung his bucket-o-brains backward before thrusting it forward again with as much force as someone who is made of pure muscle can muster.

In other words: a hell of a lot.

I couldn’t duck quickly enough, so !THWACK! his melon made direct contact with the squishy bits of my neck. It hurt like a bitch then, and the following morning–yesterday–I awoke with a massive headache. Relating, I’m certain, directly to his head against my neck.

Down the stairs I trudged, toward the medicine cabinet where I house the one pain reliever I can currently take: Tylenol. Extra Strength fucking TYLENOL. I shook two out into my palm, rolled my eyes and swallowed them. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t do jack to touch the pain.

Eventually the pain became throbby enough for me to call the doctor’s office, which is not something I typically do. I’m a trained nurse, and even though I don’t actually make money from my intended profession, I do know how to treat such things. And I don’t really need another nurse to tell me what to do.

Maybe it’s just my OB’s office nurses that offer the most insanely stupid advice to me when I call. Here’s an approximate conversation I had with one nurse when I was barfing my guts out while pregnant with Alex:

Me: “Um Hi, I’m really sick with this baby, I’m X weeks pregnant and I wanted to know if you had any good tips.”

Her: “Eat an apple.”

Me: “Huh?”

Her: “Apples.”

Me: “Uhhhh….”

Her: “I like potatoes. Like BAKED ones.”

Me: “I gotta…go.”

(click)

Yesterday I had a similar conversation. To make me call the doctor is to admit defeat, but my head was so achy and awful that I didn’t feel I had much of a choice.

Me: “Hi, I’m 14 weeks pregnant and I have a headache. I took Tylenol hours ago and it’s not helping. Can I get a prescription for something stronger?”

Her: “Not without being seen first.”

Me: “But it’s a headache. I can barely see to drive. I don’t need anything too strong. Just something more than Tylenol.”

Her: “You need to see a doctor. Have you tried laying down in a dark room?”

Me: “Hahahahaa! I have kids. Laying down in a dark room doesn’t happen unless I chain them to a wall somewhere.”

Her: “The office is closing anyway. If it’s ‘SO BAD’ you can go to the ER.”

Me: “…..? The ER?”

Her: “Yes. Or we can see you tomorrow.”

Now maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t that seem a little insane to go to the ER for a simple “I need Tylenol 3 headache?” I wasn’t asking for a morphine pump (oh, how I WISH that this had been an option) or a lifetime supply of Vicodin. What shouldn’t have been a big ass deal was suddenly an ER trip away from being labeled an OVER REACTOR!

I never did go to the ER and I still haven’t gotten my headache to go away completely, but it’s marginally tolerable now. Only thing totally solidified is my annoyance with Doctor Office Nurses.

Am I the only one?

*It’s sad to me that the only painkiller I can currently use is Tylenol. Which may help, I suppose, someone who has never tasted sweet, sweet Vicodin or even Ibuprofen, but for me? My blistering headache is laughing, LAUGHING at my pathetic use of Tylenol.

*Despite being a full-grown woman, I’m terrified of the stomach flu. It’s honestly closer to a complete phobia, and when Ben barfed all over, well, the world on Friday night, I might have maybe flipped out. Like a lot.

*And maybe it’s closer to a fear of puke. Like a fear of other people’s puke. Okay, and a fear of puking myself, too. I have no adenoids, which means that anything that is shot through my mouth invariably goes out through my nose. Like barf. Or semen.

*I have taught Alex what I consider the pinnacle of things to teach someone who still wears a diaper: I have taught him to yell “GOAL BALL” whenever he gets near, kicks, or thinks about soccer balls. What IS IT with kids and balls?

*Dave and I had made a bet back when I was pregnant with Alex about the flavor of the baby. I said boy, he said girl. If I won, he was supposed to wear a baby doll Britney Spears shirt out in public for a day and if I won, I was supposed to wear a Chicks Dig Linux shirt. I won, obviously, and he never was forces to ante up. Has the statute of limitations passed? Oh, and No. I don’t know what flavor of baby this is, yet.

*I may or may not be having a love affair with my spot lifter. Holy crap does that little thing suck up stains. Like a Hoover, only wetter.

*I’m not certain I’ll ever be able to look at bacon again for a good long while. Like perhaps years. Or at least months. I can’t believe I cured myself of a Bacon Obsession.

What’s on YOUR (addled) mind today, Internet?

I’m so pleased to hear that no one was as cruel to me as my own personal conscience. Trust me, the very act of admitting that I can no longer care for animals I love dearly hurts me to no end. I used to foster cats for awhile, until Alex was born with a pair of devil horns an no apparent “OFF” button.

But anyway, I was looking at my link list and feeling an ominous drop in my stomach. I’ve done a terrible job at maintaining the links to even the blogs that I read. I briefly considered simply removing it entirely, but I realized that that didn’t sound very fun.

So do me a favor, if you’re interested. Go to the links page and let me know if you’re on there or not. If you’re a commentor here or I comment by you, or whatever, if I know you in some way, holler with your URL so I don’t feel so damn ashamed when I look at that page.

I’ve come to the sad realization, my sweet friends in the computer, that I have bitten off more than I will ever be possibly able to chew. My house, if I hadn’t told you before is often called The Menagerie, and in addition to being the Queen Mother of All Sausages, I’m also responsible for the well being of a number of animals.

We currently have: 3 cats, 2 dogs, a bunny, a hedgehog, and two children that may have been feral at one point in time. Like yesterday. And probably this morning.

And since I’ve been with child, I’ve been unable to do some of the animal-related chores that I normally take care of. Dave works approximately 4,836 hours a week, and if I dare ask him to do something outside of what he THINKS he needs to do, I get an earful. And a half.

Ben’s not of the age where he can really and truly help me yet, although he’s getting close. But close isn’t good enough anymore.

The cats? In rebelling against whatever damn cats get irritated about (the change in seasons? The current oil crisis? Republican in the White House?) have found other places to crap and pee, which is not really an ideal situation.

Auggie, in smelling the pee that the dogs who lived in my house before me left so graciously in the carpet fibers, has been peeing in the living room. Not every day, not all the time, but enough to where the (white!) carpet is now ruined.

And as for me? I’m stuck between a rock and a bigger rock. I hate the idea of being so wildly irresponsible and getting rid of one or many of the animals, but I honestly don’t know what else TO do. This doesn’t mean that I WILL get rid of them, have no fear, just that I’m registering that I’m struggling mightily here.

Without any good solution in mind. What would you do, Internet?

Just sent my book proposal to my agents after spending some time reworking it. Excited, thrilled, nervous as a package of bacon in my fridge, they don’t begin to cover how I feel.

Now, we all know how gross I can be. I don’t generally talk about it here, but I have posted about such titillating topics as, What Happens When You’re Allergic To Yeast Infection Cream, Who SHOULD Sleep in The Wet Spot, and Summer Curtains (vagina in summer). I guess I’ve outgrown being really gross, but I have a question for you.

In my book, I have written an essay based on a blog post. A blog post about being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, which if you know anything about it, is no real laughing matter. Except when it is. Because if you can’t laugh at the phrase “Bowel Resection” or “Colostomy Bag” you have no soul. Especially when it’s YOUR future phrases here.

Anyway, here’s the initial blog post. I’m not posting the essay b/c, well, I’m lazy and it’s much longer than this. I’ve tweaked it around so Dave isn’t offering to handle my feces but my Bucket ‘o’ Poo.

“I’d imagine that most couples had a far more romantic situation when they realized that the person across the table from them would be the person that they spent the rest of their lives with. I’m picturing an intimate candlelit dinner, or a walk in the park when all of the flowers are fragrant and blooming beautifully, maybe lazing around on bearskin rug in front of a cozy fireplace (complete with crackling logs, of course) with strawberries and champagne.

I was later diagnosed with a mild case of Crohn’s disease, which has thankfully been in remission for several years. As for Daver and I, we’ve been more or less stuck with each other ever since. Every time that I become irritated by his colony of dirty socks that happily live next to our bed, I try my damndest to remind myself that, at one point in time, he selflessly offered to touch my poop.”

Here’s the question for you and I want you to answer honestly. I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t want your opinion, but assuming Dave is no longer handling my poo but the BUCKET of Poo (there is a difference there, I swear), IS THIS TOO MUCH? Is it too gross? Too foul?

(it’s a true story)