Being a grown-up is bullshit.

1) Replacing the windows in your house brings you to higher orgasmic heights than your last, well, orgasm.

2) You become very interested in the state of the new grass growing in your front yard. So much so that you will use any excuse to make people go and look at it. People. Like the mailman. Or a random jogger.

3) You own a designated Puke Bucket.

6) You refer to the hardware store as the happiest place on earth.

11) Bra-less, your breasts appear to be two oranges in tube socks. This alarms you less than it should.

23) You don’t drink to get sloppy, you drink because you “like the taste.”

47) Between the Teacher’s Institute Days, the celebration of Columbus’s Taint, International Ballpoint Pen Day, and obscurely PC-named weeks off, you’re not entirely sure your child actually attends school. Ever.

106) Once you get the kids to bed, your racy thoughts turn to ugly pajamas and television. When your spouse turns to you with “that look” in his eye, your only real response is a resonating sigh.

235) Tax refunds are no longer spent on a Hot Wing Tour of the US, but used to replace a door. A door, I should add, that while not entirely functional, is not broken.

551) You become irate at those stupid fucking teenagers driving up and down the street at Mach 8. So much so that you have a collection of golf-balls ready to lob at their cars.

1301) Your major selling point when purchasing a new mobile phone is no longer, “What games can it run,” but rather “Does it have a calendar? What about silent setting for meetings, Oh and does it synch with my linked-in?”

3159) Your idea of a “good time” involves reading a book about famous mathematicians.

7741) When you’re out past 9 PM, you’re all, “HOLY SHIT it’s LATE.”

19320) You begin to buy plants based upon the time of year that they bloom rather than, “does the name sound like an STD?”

What are some other signs you’re getting old, Pranksters?

(I’ve been up half the night playing Barf in Buckets, so my brain is a little fried)

I have food issues.

I like to think of them as sort of cute lil quirks, you know, the sort of thing that makes me endearing rather than annoying, but having lived with a foodie (The Guy On My Couch) and a pseudo-foodie (The Daver), I’ve come to realize that my food issues are more on the oh-my-God-you-are-so-weird spectrum. But hey, at least I have kicky hair.

See, while I happen to love fruit, I can’t look at canned fruit. In fact, the smell of canned fruit makes me heave histrionically. Actually, most things in cans repulse me. I’d rather go hungry than eat canned food. Which means when the Zombie Apocalypse happens, I’m gonna die. Immediately. Well, if I’m not raptured.

Hey, it’s possible.

(so is John C Mayer being un-douchey, the sun rising in the west and squirtable cheese in a can.)(…WAIT A MINUTE)

Anyway. Food issues.

They include a distrust of cream based salad dressing (especially thousand island, which appears to be the direct creation of Satan’s bunghole) and other creamy things in a can. Especially mayonnaise. The very thought of mayonnaise may ruin my appetite for mere moments at a time!

Mayonnaise is just so…so…WRONG.

A couple of months ago, The Guy On My Couch agreed to make me spinach and artichoke dip without the artichokes because who the hell likes those? (apparently most people who are not me). As I was off scouring the sale-rack for half-price Pop Rocks, The Guy On My Couch sneakily purchased a tub ‘o’ Mayo. I didn’t see it until we were in the car because he was being all stealth-like about it – he knew I’d overrule him and put back the mayo.

One morning, before he had a real job, I asked him to make the dip for breakfast.

Aunt Becky: “Hey, can you make the spinach dip now?”

The Guy On My Couch: “Sure.”

Aunt Becky: “You can’t put mayo in it.”

The Guy On My Couch: “Just…don’t come into the kitchen.”

Aunt Becky: “Why?”

The Guy On My Couch (shuffles feet around): “There’s a zombie in there.”

Aunt Becky (runs for the mustard): “Oh my GOD, REALLY? BATTEN DOWN THE MOTHERFUCKING HATCHES!”

The Guy On My Couch: “Um….yeah!”

Aunt Becky: “You’re going to put mayo in the dip, aren’t you?”

The Guy On My Couch: “LOOKIT THE SQUIRREL OUTSIDE. ISN’T HE HILARIOUS?”

Aunt Becky: (glares) “Nice try.”

The Guy On My Couch (preens): “THANKS!”

Aunt Becky: “On second thought, let’s go get donuts.”

Now that tub of white goo that looks mysteriously like spooge has sat in my lazy Susan for months, unopened. I’m sure as shit not going to open it up and grab out a nice big spoonful and if someone were to do it in my presence, I’d probably sit there making barfy noises until they opted to go into the other room. I’d, of course, follow them and continue heaving.

(my six word memoir? “Not just stupid, but annoying too!”)

The problem is this:

Aunt Becky wanders into the kitchen and, upon gazing lovingly at the box of Equal, notices a white tub of goo:

“OMFG, I CANNOT BELIEVE WE HAVE MARSHMALLOW FLUFF AND NO ONE TOLD ME!”

*Grabs can and spoon*

“FUCK, it’s MAYO. DAMMIT.”

Rinse, repeat, every two or three days. God BLESS you Topamax for wiping my short-term memory. So glad I can still recall every phone number I’ve ever had but cannot manage to remember where I left my pants or how to update my blog.

I’m aware that the “smart thing” to do would be to dump the mayo once and for all, but no one has EVER accused me of being smart unless they were being particularly sarcastic, which, who could blame them?

Now if you don’t mind, I have a tub of Marshmallow Fluff waiting for me….

….oh right. Never mind.

So what’s going on with YOU, Pranksters? What’s YOUR six word memoir?

Interviewing for jobs is bullshit.

I mean, you’re standing there, nervous as shit, and apologizing to the silk plant to your right for bumping into it because you know the secretary is secretly taking notes on you and OH EM GE is that a camera above you or have you been watching too much reality television?

On my last job interview, well before I’d gotten pregnant with Alex, I was doing the rounds and applying for all sorts of jobs I didn’t really want. I figured the interviews were “good experience,” plus, I got to wear a suit. I like suits.

I’d applied for a job working for a major US health insurance company. I’d be doing some claims processing, going over the necessity for certain treatments, and, I later learned, (ALLEGEDLY) taught to work the system in order to ensure that the members got what they needed when they needed it.

It was the only job I’d been applying for that managed to pique my interest. The rest of the interviews went like this:

Aunt Becky: “Hi, I’m…”

Person Interviewing: (interrupts): “Do you have a pulse?”

Aunt Becky: *blinks*

Person Interviewing: “I mean, OBVIOUSLY you have a pulse, you’re here, right? (nervous laugh)”

Aunt Becky: *blinks*

Person Interviewing: “Can you start on the Ortho floor this afternoon? We’ve got a ratio of 8 patients to one nurse and no nursing techs. You’ll be working an 18. SOUND GOOD?”

Aunt Becky: *blinks*

Person Interviewing: “Here’s your uniform.”

Aunt Becky *backs away slowly*

Person Interviewing: “You can wear jeans! JUST GO TO THE ORTHO FLOOR PLEASE! J-CO* IS COMING!”

That’s the way my interviews had gone. And as much as I’d loved to have worked an 18 on a floor without techs with 8 whole patients who weren’t quite ambulatory, I had enough respect for my back to turn it down.

So my job at the insurance company, well, it was what I’d wanted. Mostly. I didn’t want to work weekends or holidays. Working an 18 would leave me injecting myself with normal saline just to stay awake. I love people. I don’t love sick people. Shitty career path, huh?

Anyway.

First stop on my interview train was to a computer where I had to type shit. I think they wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to type, “I HAVE A BOMB MOTHERFUCKERS” or something. Last I checked, everyone our age types at like 8097 words per minute. Side effect of the computer generation.

Once the computer, which was made in approximately 1902, green words and all, booted me off, I waited for my round of interviews. I checked the room for cameras, but didn’t see any. Delusions of paranoia much?

Eventually a spry looking lady came to get me. She introduced herself as the person I’d be working for, which made me breathe a sigh of relief – she seemed both sane and high energy. Great combo.

She led me to a small meeting room and began chit-chatting with me while we waited for the other person to show. Apparently, at Super Huge Insurance Company, two managers did the interviewing. I immediately suspected a good-cop/bad-cop routine.

The second manager sauntered in, and I immediately read her as a bitch. Between the way she walked, the way she sneered when my manager spoke, and the haughty smile she gave as she tossed her bleached-blond hair back, I could tell that, had she been my table and I her server, she’d have run me around every time I got near her, only to stiff me and complain to my manager in order to get some free coupons.

My heart sunk. I thought about all those ortho people I’d have to lug around and shuddered instinctively.

Before we began, my manager assured me that the questions were unique – there were no “wrong” answers. We went back and forth between the standard interview questions, “how would you handle XYZ?” “Where are your pants?” “How would you describe yourself in three words or less?”

Bitchy blonde lady asked me one, “What happened the last time your boss made a decision for you to carry out – but it was something you didn’t want to do?”

I wracked my brain. Generally when my bosses told me to do something I didn’t want to do, I deliberately disobeyed. No wrong answers. No wrong answers. So I can keep talking and it won’t be WRONG. I love this game!

They stared at me. I began to sweat – I couldn’t tell the about the beers I’d snuck in the back coolers or the times that I didn’t charge my friends for keg beer. I couldn’t tell them about sprinkling a ton of red pepper flakes into the dipping sauce of a particularly rude table. Um. THINK, Becky, THINK. Or BULLSHIT, Becky, BULLSHIT.

“Well, there was this one time (okay, that sounds good, like you know what your saying. Good work, mental high five!), that my manager Peter, he, um, (BECKY, STOP SAYING UM. IT’LL CLUE THEM IN THAT YOU’RE FULL OF BULLSHIT) well, he asked if anyone was stealing blocks of cheese. He kinda looked like a detective, ready to catch the cheese thief, but that’s mostly because he looked like he’d stepped out of the set of a 1920’s movie (STOP ADDING DETAILS, MORON). When he asked me if I knew who’d been stealing cheese, I said ‘I didn’t know’ even though I MAYBE knew. (God, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever said.)”

I looked at the two of them, ashamed, knowing I’d blown that. But NO WRONG ANSWERS! PHEW.

The blond one glared at me, rolled her eyes and spoke, “You’re wrong.”

My mouth dropped open as my face turned electric red. Not being much of a blusher, it made it that. much. worse.

She continued, “I don’t think that’s what you meant.”

Okay, now I was just confused. Rather than respond, I simply stared at her. My manager got all flustered and quickly ushered me out the front door where I realized, once and for all, that I was not being filmed. My reality-show dreams had been dashed.

And there was no way in fuck that I’d gotten that job.

That afternoon I got the offer letter.

I started the following week.

*J-CO isn’t to be confused with J-LO. J-CO is actually the Joint Commission, accredits and certifies health care organizations. They’re also pedantic and annoying as shit when they come for inspections (as, I hate to admit, they should be).

Now I’m not a hoarder. I’m not even very sentimental.

(you’ll note that I am decidedly NOT a hoarder because every time someone comes over, I try to send them home with everything from Orchids to children)

I watch Hoarders as inspiration to clean my fucking house, and I’ll tell you that it has worked to curb any impulse buying I may or may not have experienced (so, so sorry, The Target, for breaking up with you like this. I know I should have done it more personally, but hey, you read my blog).

I’m also not attached to my stuff. Not most of it, at least. I’d throw down some fisticuffs if you threatened Big Mac II or my iPad. It’s not, however, because they remind me of “greener days,” and “happier times,” but because they allow me to work. Or try to get more than one star on those stupid Angry Birds game. Which is more complex than actual work, but I digress.

My Son: *carrying around a baby doll*

Aunt Becky: “Why are you carrying around that doll?”

Ben, My Son (Not the Guy on my Couch*): “We’re playing Oregon Trail at school and Sam needed a boy baby.”

Aunt Becky: *thinks about how awesome it would be to make the doll have “dysentery.” *

Ben: “It’s for school.”

Aunt Becky *still bitter that the i(can’t)Phone version or Oregon Trail is neither gory or has fun as it used to be. These are probably related events*. “Oh? What are you doing with it?”

Ben: “I told you. Sam needs a baby boy.”

Aunt Becky *grumbles* “Like THAT clears it up for me.”

Ben: “I have to bring it.”

Aunt Becky *looks at the stained baby and recalls how she’d lovingly gotten it for her then-five-year-old son Ben who was about to become a big brother*: “Ben, no. You can’t take it.”

Ben: “I HAVE TO TAKE IT.”

Aunt Becky: “Why?”

Ben: “SAM NEEDS A BABY BOY.”

Aunt Becky: “So you’re going to bring it to school and probably forget it there, right?”

Ben: “Yes.”

Aunt Becky: “NO.”

Ben: “But I’m GONNA GET LATE POINTS!”

Aunt Becky: “The doll’s for Sam, not you. If you need something to signify a baby that badly, take a stuffed animal instead.”

Ben: “NO.”

Aunt Becky: “You have your teacher call me and tell me why you need to bring this particular doll in.”

Ben: *stomps off in the way only a histrionic 10-year old can.*

Aunt Becky (to herself): “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

Two adult male voices chime in simultaneously: “Waco.”

Turns out, Pranksters, I wasn’t quite ready to let go of that baby doll; the one he’d once named Seth.

*my BFF who moved here to start a new life.

…Post a picture of something random then link to this post. Which I wrote. I love it. I can’t read the comments, but I love the post.

And no, I wasn’t talking about you – ANY of you.

Last night, after I punched myself in the ‘nads for fucking with my roses too early, I got online and began to work on a resource page for teen mental illness.

Don’t tell me, I’ll tell you: I KNOW HOW TO PARTY.

When I was as done as I was going to be, I IM’d my friend, Tooks, to proof the page which was approximately the size and shape of a novel, and included such phrases as “fuck yeah, teens can have mental illnesses.”

(my teen pregnancy pages notes that one of the symptoms of pregnancy is “a baby coming out of your vagina.”)

(WELL, IT’S TRUE)

Aunt Becky: “Hey, can you proof teen mental illness for me?”

Tooks: “Sure.”

Aunt Becky goes to work on another page while watching a video about dancing hamsters.

Tooks: “I don’t know if kids are going to understand the phrase ‘Drink the Kool-Aid.”

Aunt Becky: “…”

Immediately takes to The Twitter:

“Was just informed that kids might not understand the phrase, “drink the Kool-Aid. WHAT’S WRONG WITH KIDS THESE DAYS?”

“APPARENTLY, we need a new cult with a suicide pact.”

“That came out wrong. DON’T DO DRUGS, KIDS. STAY IN SCHOOL.”

I then turned to the two male occupants of my house, “You DO know what drinking the Kool-Aid means, right?”

Ben (The Guy On My Couch): “Yeah, it’s about Waco.”

Aunt Becky: “No. It’s not. Waco had the fires.”

Ben: “And the Kool-Aid.”

Aunt Becky: “Not all cult massacres involve Kool-Aid. Oh wait, didn’t those comet people use Kool-Aid too?”

Ben: “The Hail-Bopp comet?”

Aunt Becky: “Yeah, they were in California.”

Ben: “No, they were in Texas.”

Aunt Becky: “No, that was Waco.”

Ben: “Well, that was before California joined the Union.”

Aunt Becky: “It was in like 1996.”

Ben: “YEAH, EXACTLY. BEFORE CALIFORNIA JOINED THE UNION.”

Aunt Becky: “Not all cults stem from Waco, Ben.”

Ben: “…”

Aunt Becky: “Like the Jonestown Massacre – WHERE THEY DRANK THE KOOL-AID.”

Ben: “That was also in Waco.”

Aunt Becky: “No, that was Jim Jones. In AFRICA.”

Ben: “Africa is in Waco, right?”

Aunt Becky: “I thought I was bad with geography.”

————

Looks at kids who have thrown cushions around the room, “Guys, pick up the cushions or I’ll go all Waco on you.”

Two sets of eyes rolled simultaneously, as they did, in fact, pick up the cushions.

———-

I can’t wait to try the Branch Davidians method of getting them up in the mornings. Got my iPod and my stereo all ready to play some AC/DC. At 11.

Because it GOES to 11.

I don’t make lists.

Or, I should say, I don’t make GOOD lists. Every time I get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of dancing cactus videos on YouTube, I tell one of my Type-A friends that I am overwhelmed by the volume of dancing cactus videos. Rather than simply GO THROUGH THEM ALL AND TELL ME WHICH ONES ARE GOOD (in spreadsheet form, natch), they say the same words. ALWAYS the same words.

“Make a list.”

And every time, I’m all, “these are Type A people – they have color-coding and highlighters – they MUST know what they’re talking about.”

So I start a list:

• Watch dancing cactus video
• Drink Diet Coke
• Fantasize about owning boxing nun
• Google directions to nearest nunnery
• Pour cup of coffee
• Realize I’ll probably spontaneously combust should I step onto the sacred soil
• Wonder what nuns do all day
• Assume it’s not watch dancing cactus videos
• Go onto next dancing cactus video

Then I realize that I’ve spent 46 minutes making a list that’s now stressing me out because, well, THAT’S A LOT OF SHIT TO DO, I’D RATHER JUST DO IT AND NOT HAVE TO STOP AND WRITE IT DOWN, THANK YOU TYPE-A PEOPLE.

I rip up my lame-ass list and roll my eyes any time anyone says the words “Type” and “A” together in a sentence. Because who wants to make lists? The same people who thrive off Post-It Notes. NOT SANE PEOPLE.

I woke up this morning and realized I wanted to make a list. Not a “life list,” (life list is apparently pretentious hipster-speak for being able to write things like, “climb the summit of a tall mountain wearing my Northface Jacket” and “drink fine wine on the backs of starving children.”) because those are lame, but a list of things I’d like to do someday, but, through the actual act of living a life in which every time I make a “plan,” things go horribly awry, so I’ll probably never get to do. Ever.

(Unfair Jab at Pretentious Hipsters: But hey, at least I’m good with straight-up iodized salt rather than sea salt carefully culled from the bottom of the dead sea, then breathed upon by unicorns until it made it’s way onto my $145 dollar entree.)

Return a movie on time to Blockbuster

Eat chocolate cake in the bath in a poufy dress

Figure out how many licks it takes to beat someone to death with a Tootsie Pop

Give up on the idea that Jen and Brad are EVER going to get back together

Get over my unresolved anger at Angelina Jolie and her sanctimonious pillowy lips

Find and purchase 2 smaller, angrier birds (the Winklevoss Twins!) to set deliberately behind Mark Zuckerberg

Use a Post-It note successfully – not just for lobbing insults in adorable wee form.

Buy all items on this screen AT ONCE

Especially the testicles. Because obviously.

Figure out why the hell someone made a testicle self-exam kit.

Figure out why a testicle self-exam kit costs $114

Inform everyone I know that this, in fact, is what I want for my birthday

Buy a cell phone that actually makes calls.

Become BFF with Tom from Myspace. That dude was EVERYBODY’S friend.

Immortalize Tom from Myspace in tacky lawn ornament form.

Figure out what happened to Justin Timberlake, you know, the guy who started Napster?

Punch someone while they’re in the middle of their “If you can dream it, you can DO it,” speech. BECAUSE I HAD A DREAM TOO, MOTHERFUCKER, AND IT’S BEEN RUINED.

Admit that I haven’t actually HAD a dream to ruin, so there’s that.

Get three stars on an Angry Birds level so that I can do a victory dance, tell The Twitter, then realize how lame I’ve become.

Meet someone from Delaware IN THE FLESH.

Become a real-life troll, and stand in the middle of The Target yelling “You’re fat!” and “You’re ugly!” until I am arrested.

Take the Route 66 road-trip through the States. With or without Mark Zuckerberg as my copilot.

Get raptured.

Get UN-raptured because Heaven is Bullshit.

Wear my Shut Your Whore Mouth to a Middle School Function.

Figure out what the hell Stumble Upon actually does.

Punch John C. Mayer in the ‘nads. Alternately, immortalize him in tacky lawn-ornament form.

—————-

What do YOU want to do, Pranksters? Alternately, what do you think *I* should do?

Pranksters,

Meet Mark Zuckerberg:

He’s dating The Bloggesses Beyonce.

He’s also the culmination of approximately 291,727 years of work on my house.

Some people, they get stressed and eat a cake. Others drink a bottle of wine. Still others go on mad shopping sprees until they’ve amassed a houseful of garbage and appear on Hoarders so that I may watch and then go clean my house obsessively.

When my kids were little and I got stressed, I’d vacuum. My formerly white carpets were spotless* whenever I had a particularly bad week (read: year). They were too small for me to bundle up and take out back so I could do what I really wanted: to get into my garden.

I know there are babies out there (reportedly) who sit in things like “strollers” and “hang out calmly,” but I’m telling you Pranksters, THOSE BABIES WERE NOT MINE. I got more snide comments from people – “well, I didn’t GIVE my child the option to NOT ride in the stroller,” during those years. I never responded with – but should’ve – “wanna give it a shot with them? How far can you take ’em before DCFS gets called due to reports of child abuse?”

I’ve owned three strollers. One was a shitty Graco stroller that made an uncanny clicking noise when we walked. Ben – as a baby – screamed whenever he got near it**. The second was an umbrella stroller I could occasionally coax my then-five year old son Ben into. The third was the Cadillac of Strollers (some overpriced Bumbleride), which I bought for Alex. That fucker is still sitting in my garage like an albatross, reminding me that I could’ve WAITED to see if my child would actually allow me to put him down.

(answer: no. Not ever)

Anyway, when they were small, gardening went like this:

Aunt Becky: “I’m going outside to garden.”

Daver: “Can you take the kids?”

Aunt Becky: “No, I’m working in thorny roses.”

Daver: “Okay.”

Then the kids would stand sadly at the window, like a pile of weeping puppies, pointing at me until I let them outside.

I got nothing done unless it was naptime or bedtime (for babies).

That’s a fucking shame: the previous occupants of my home had let the landscaping done by the previous PREVIOUS occupants go to shit – the house was shrouded in bushes. My house, overgrown with bushes, looked remarkably like a serial killer lived here.

This was AFTER I’d removed a couple of bushes.

Turns out the seventies bush wasn’t just for pubic hair.

I was super embarrassed. Like, you can only claim, “it’s from the previous occupants” for so long before people start rolling their eyes.

So my front yard was full of bushes. My backyard was full of patchy grass and fake flowers.

Yes. Those are fake flowers. In the middle of February. It took a long fucking time to get rid of all that shit.

Luckily, I have. My house, while still a horrifying shade of yellow (the insurance quote only noted hail damage on TWO of the four sides = fuckers), is finally becoming something I’m not entirely horrified to show off.

I planted a rose garden. The gutter guy totally knocked one over and I am thinking about paying him a “visit” with my “shovel.”

I planted more roses. And gardened in a swim suit.

(don’t judge – I had the stomach flu)

So thank YOU, to the stress of the last few months, for allowing me to whip my yard into shape.

I think it’s time for a Prankster-Only Encased Meat Festival. Who wants in?

*yet still dingy – I need new carpeting. Terribly.

**He also, I should report, screamed when the sun shifted to a forty-five degree angle, any time anyone said the word, “the” and from 4-10PM on every day that ended in “day.”

First, go here. Read this. It made me cry.

Then write your story over there

Or here.

ALL of them.

————

Okay back? Good. Here goes:

I owe you a bit of an explanation, Pranksters. Without warning I stopped writing my Go Ask Aunt Becky column, which, as someone with a high degree of anal retentiveness (*waves*), drove me crazy.

I’d started my lame advice column as a joke, intended to write up dumb answers to such things as “why do I have so much sausage in the fridge?” and “where are my pants?”

Instead, you guys sent me real questions with real problems and I? Well, I got…overwhelmed? I guess that’s the word. My life has been a roller coaster of weird lately and I, well, I wouldn’t take any of my own advice. Ever. You don’t want to be like me.

The other non-serious questions had to do with blogging, mostly of the “how do I get famous?” variety. And while I’ve written my Blogging for Dummies Guide, I’m not sure how to answer that sort of question without getting all, “with fame comes great responsibility,” or whatever.

My own blog grew organically because I hit the right segment of the population at the right time, not because I had an excessively awesome theme or anything. Like anything else, blogging is a hit-or-miss kinda thing and some people make it and you’ll totally get why while others (*waves*) confound you – how could someone be so dumb?

Anyway.

I’ll get back into my advice column. Feel free to submit questions up at the top of my screen – and, as always, feel free to give your advice in the comments.

—————-

Dear Aunt Becky,

Why should I ask your advice if you’re not a real professional?

Dear Prankster:

You get what you pay for.

——————–

Hey Aunt Becky,

Recently I found out a friend I had lost contact with had been a victim of, carjacking, kidnapping, and sexual assault. She is almost a year survived from the attack, but having terrible ptsd, Keeping her from working and enjoying her young life. I no longer live near hear and wanted to send a care package to her to show her my love. Any ideas for this package? I thought spa, but really think that might not be the best idea, with the physical contact. Any ideas would be wonderful. (btw man was caught and charged for all these awful things he has done to her)
Love your niece,
Kay

Hello my darling Kay!

What happened to your friend is fucking hideous and you? Are full of the awesome for wanting to help her.

I’d suggest sending her a package of random stuff to make her smile – I agree that the spa thing is probably a bad idea. I’d fill a box with random things – some chocolate, some goofy craft stuff, a tiara, whatever – cute stuff she can go through and giggle at. And write her a nice letter telling her you’re thinking of her.

I’ve made you THIS for helping someone heal from sexual assault, and I hope it helps.

Send your friend all my love. And you too, for being such a kickass friend. We could all be so lucky.

Love,

AB

—————

Dear Aunt Becky,

I feel really awkward calling you that but hey it’s whatever. One simple question I’m a mom and I want to start a mommy blog but I don’t want it to be traditional like the ones you read while you’re bored surfing the internet and the first sentence is … kat took her first poop in the big girl toilet.

haha big FUCKING woop.

Do you have any advice not to be that mom and where do I start?

Dear Prankster,

I love the awkward – assumed familiarity is beyond hilarious. And you don’t want to write about your kid taking a shit? THANK YOU, on behalf of the Internet, THANK YOU.

I wrote up this Blogging for Dummies Guide – let me know if it helps.

Love you,

AB

“They look like white elephants,” she said.

“I’ve never seen one,” the man drank his beer.

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

“I might have,” the man said. “Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything.”

– Hills Like White Elephants, Ernest Hemingway

It starts with the nightmares.

Night after night, I’m stranded in airports I’ve never visited – some exotic, some rural – malls I’ve never seen, always looking for someone who, in a dream-like way, I know is looking for me, too. A particular someone – someone who I’ve never met, but someone who, I chase night after night. I have a feeling I’d know him if I saw him, but really, that could be a lie.

It feels silly, to admit that I spend my dream time, not eating Marshmallow Fluff, but looking for a particular person. I’d much rather be saving the world while I sleep than sorting through the faceless masses at fictional airports.

Once the dreams begin, sleeping becomes fitful, if not impossible.

I’ve not won any sleeping awards since I got my thyroid regulated (I HAVE A GLANDULAR PROBLEM), but during these patches, it becomes nearly impossible. When I sleep, I run, I chase, I wake myself weeping into my pillow or moaning in sadness. By 9AM, all hope of rest gone, I slog my soggy ass out of bed and pretend that I remember what it’s like to sleep.

I’m functional for a few weeks like this, groggy, with slowed reflexes, but, with my rate of unintentional self-injury, no one notices.

It’s only after a few weeks, months, I don’t know how long, that I start to crack. The anxiety becomes too much. Things I would’ve normally found hilarious – my neighbors tree, for example, which looks like it’s growing a full set of knockers – don’t even elicit the barest of smiles.

I want so desperately to reach out, to connect with someone; anyone, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t bring myself to admit that it’s okay to be weak – that I’m allowed to not understand my feelings. It’s then that the voices of those who I have once loved echo through my head and I begin to doubt. Everything. Myself. My ability to function in every day society.

The echos of things once-said flit through my mind. “I can’t handle your problems right now,” my ghost-husband says. “You’re a liar,” my ghost-brother says. “Take down that story about the rape or I’ll take action,” my ghost ex threatens.

My world becomes smaller, ever smaller, as the PTSD rears it’s head. And this time, like the others, it leaves me gasping for air, for straws, for any reason as to why there’s a 9,827 pound white elephant on my chest when the rest of the world seems to be breathing air like it’s no big deal.

I wonder what is so fundamentally fucked inside my head that I can’t manage to beat this PTSD: my daughter lived. I have countless friends who’d gnaw off a couple of legs to say the same thing. So why am I so fucked? Why does rubbing my hand along the plastic implant inside her skull make me break out in a cold sweat? She squeals and laughs runs and plays and kicks her brothers with wild abandon, while I am trapped on the couch, my windpipe unable to properly move air into my lungs.

And those words, those words like white elephants, trapped in my lungs, they remain unspoken.