One of my goals for the new year was to “spend some time living outside the computer, even though the real world is fast and scary and full of people who wear jeggings.” It seemed a bit loftier than “Not become Lil Wayne” (which I should add, is a resolution I’ve managed to keep for an entire month and a half now) and loads better for my self-esteem.

See, people are all, “bloggers are introverts who have no social skills and hate crowds of people,” which makes me all, “um, not so much.” Because while I may greet you for the first time by humping your leg while eating a hot dog, THAT DOESN’T MEAN I DON’T HAVE SOCIAL SKILLS. In fact, I’d venture to say that it means I EXCEL at social skills. Just ask all the people who have restraining orders against me.

What can I say? I’m a friendly sorta person.

But when I dared to tell myself that I had to be more social, the Universe was all, “bwahahaha, sucker,” and threw me a wicked case of the flu. Two weeks and counting.

(and yes, Pranksters, I’d go to the doctor if I actually had something worth treating)

So when my good friend Dana showed up at my house unexpectedly, I was all, OMG A REAL PERSON IN MAH HOUSE. I ran around frantically to find a hot dog to eat while I humped her leg. It was pretty wicked to have someone over. Especially since I can now make people spend at least ten minutes oohing and aahing over my purple-flavored walls.

We sat and caught up for a couple of hours while Amelia performed tricks in front of her Auntie Dana like a good ickle show-dog. It was nice. I can’t remember the last time I spent any amount of time with someone who didn’t want to talk about work.

(what, me a workaholic?)

(you shut your whore mouth)

She also noticed how clean my house was, which made me all barrel-chested with pride. See, I like a clean house. Problem’s been that my husband works a kajillion hours a week and doesn’t seem to care one way or another whether the house looks like a shot out of a Hoarders episode or not. I’m not entirely convinced he’s not blind.

Plus, the three crotch parasites used to delight in pulling absolutely everything out and leaving it in one ginormous pile for me to break my toes on. I tried to keep up with the mess, but damns, it was hard.

Then a magical thing happened.

My children grew up. They got anal about house-cleaning. Dave started giving a shit about the house. The Guy on the Couch helped me clean.

And most importantly, I have been sticking to my other OTHER New Years Resolution – “one a day.”

I’ve been donating, dumping, and throwing away one thing every single day. It sounds really hard, right? Like, one thing a day for a year is a fuckton of shit to dump. I hate committing to things that take a year (mostly because I’m an impatient sea-hag).

You know what?

It’s been easier than I’d thought. I’ve managed to get rid of more than one thing each day, which means that my house becomes more manageable each and every day.

In the same way that it feels good to hear, “damn, you look like you lost weight” when you’ve been dieting, it felt amazaballs to hear “your house looks the best I’ve seen it,” from someone who knows you well.

(others might have been offended, but not me)

Now if only I could find a home for that stupid monogrammed embosser thing I’d bought (while probably drunk) that I’ll never use.

I’m not a creative person.

I’m not saying that to elicit sympathy or fish for the occasional, “there, there, Aunt Becky, you’re SO creative,” because I know it’s a hot pile of bullshit. I’m not creative.

Take, for example, the time in high school that I took a drawing class as an elective. I sat there, my beret perched neatly atop my head, all, “Imma be an ARTIST,” until I had to actually draw my first picture. A still life of a bowl of grapes looked more like a pile of testicles hovering over a tire than actual fruit. It took a few weeks, but after I realized I had no artistic aptitude, I simply copied the work of someone much more talented sitting next to me – the first and only time I ever cheated in a class.

My desire to be a creative genius, a veritable child prodigy, went back a lot further than that, though.

We always had Lego sets lying around when I was a kid. My brother, the actual creative one in the family and a full ten years my senior, was able to build these amazing creations from a bin of random Lego bits. I figured I could do the same. It couldn’t be THAT hard, right?

Heh.

One Saturday, as I watched the morning cartoons, I decided to prove to the world – and my family – that my mug belonged squarely on the cover of Time Magazine as the “World’s Most Awesomest Kid” (alternately, “The World’s Best Genius.”) – I wasn’t sure which would be more effective.

I schlepped down to the basement in my footie pajamas, careful to avoid slipping down the stairs, on my quest for the basket of Legos. Tucked away in the corner, right behind the antique butter churn and some ancient copies of the New Yorker, I found it.

I brushed off the dust (my brother had long-since traded Legos for sports cars) and lugged the basket up the stairs. I plopped it in front of the television, marveling at all the ways I could make super awesome stuffs. Like a pirate ship. Or a pony on roller skates.

After, of course, I cleaned the cat pee off the Legos.

I sat there, in front of Jem and the Holographs and started trying to put something together out of the random bits of Lego. Hrms. I couldn’t create a pony – no horse head. Roller skates required wheels, which I didn’t have either. And a pirate ship? Well, not so much.

But I tried.

And after about an hour of blood, sweat, tears and Legos, I looked down at my masterpiece. It was a square box. With one window – no door. Even the house I tried to make looked all janked up. Who the fuck can’t make a house?

Me. I couldn’t.

I sighed deeply. Clearly my “muse” was a lying fucking bitch. Ever since, I’ve eschewed anything Lego-related.

That is, of course, I had children.

My eldest, who has autism, loves Legos. There’s something innately soothing to him about lining up all the wee parts, following directions, and creating something grand. That is, of course, until a piece goes missing. With two smaller siblings and a mess of cats, that’s pretty much all the time. Shit, I STILL can’t find my whore pants, which are, needless to say, much larger than a piece of Lego.

Once a piece is lost, the set is “ruined” and he refuses to play with it.

I’d mostly banished Legos from my house until The Guy On My Couch moved in – there’s too much pressure to make sure the sets are in pristine condition for me to actively buy Legos for my kid.

The Guy On My Couch, he loves Legos. I know, you’re probably all, “so, he’s an overgrown teenager, right?” to which I would reply, “yes, but he also cooks.”

I find his obsession with Legos more endearing than not – one look at my orchid collection and you’d know that he’s not the only one in the house with collecting issues.

He’s been carefully assembling Hogwarts Lego sets and putting the completed pieces in my china cabinet (I will soon have to find a new place to store my china and Cock Soup packets), which has sparked the Lego bug deep within my children. Apparently a love of Legos is created by osmosis. And I get it – the finished kits are pretty fucking cute.

I wouldn’t mind living in Lego Land so much if I hadn’t stepped on approximately 800 Lego pieces in the last week.

Those motherfuckers hurt.

I started work at age sixteen (no, not uphill both ways in the snow) in a fancy restaurant. Before I could serve tables, I had to turn 18, so I spent those years as a hostess. I’m telling you – you’ll never learn more about people than you do if you are forced to massage egos – very expensive egos.

It was there, at the now-defunct Mill Race Inn, that I learned about Valentine’s Day.

That’s not to say that I didn’t know about VD Day before working there – I simply didn’t understand the great lengths people went to to create the “perfect night.” I also didn’t understand the ire that was evoked by having a “perfect night” go awry. I don’t know how many people pitched fits when they didn’t get sat at the perfect table, but it had to be in the hundreds. One perfectly normal looking woman actually got down on the floor and began kicking and screaming. In the middle of a crowded restaurant. With no shame.

Valentine’s Day was always a cluster of fuckery.

I personally haven’t had a typically romantic Valentine’s Day regardless of relationship status – one year I ordered us a heart-shaped pizza. Other years, I went and purchased myself something shiny. It never mattered to me much.

Most importantly, it never changed the way I felt about the holiday – I love Valentine’s Day. Pink, puffy, glittery hearts type of love.

When Ben was a baby, my best friends and I found ourselves (rarely) single at the same time on VD-Day. Rather than mope about our doomed relationships, as we could easily have done, we decided that it was high time to start a new tradition: Lesbian Valentine’s Day.

No, no, we didn’t do a Four Girls One Cup kinda thing – that’s for amateurs. Instead, we fed my (now-deceased, overly large and awesomely adorable) cat bacon cheeseburgers. We ate Wendy’s there in my living room, the lot of us together, laughing and talking until late in the evening. They’d interrupted my studying for the evening – something that I rarely allowed to happen – and we had one of the best Valentine’s Days ever.

So what if we weren’t drinking Cristal atop the Hancock building? So what if no one had purchased us baubles and trinkets? So what if we didn’t have a special someone to tell us all the reasons we were worth loving?

We had each other.

We had Lesbian Valentine’s Day.

We also had Big Pink.

Yep, my best friend bought the lot of us Big Pink – the world’s best vibrator.

I will tell you here and now, it was by far, by FAR, the best Valentine’s Day gift I’ve ever gotten.  Even better than the heart-shaped pizza and the diamonds.

Although, I’d have been pretty happy with a Shut Your Whore Mouth Shirt (that’s the perfect VD Gift, I’ve seen), had I created any at that time. P.S. I started a Zazzle Store, which I’ve been working on in pieces. That shit is confusing.

What’s your favorite VD-Day memory?

I’d reached the point where I was simply praying that my middle son was going to find a particularly nice young man to room with in college – the kind who didn’t mind occasionally changing my son’s diapers.

I figured that there were plenty of people in the world who liked to poop into diapers (after watching Hoarders, I now know that there are plenty of people who like to poo into bags AND THEN SAVE IT. Best of all? YOU KNOW IT TOO, NOW.)(You’re welcome).

I mean, there was that crazy astronaut lady who drove across the country to kill her lover’s wife or something WHILE WEARING ADULT DIAPERS. Clearly, there’s a market for that stuff. And clearly, my kid was going to join into that market.

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t a good example. Hoarders + Crazy Astronaut Lady don’t = great sampling size.

Either way, I’d resigned myself to it. It was that, or pull my hair out one by ever-loving one until I had a bald spot the shape of Alaska on my previously hair-covered scalp.

So yesterday, still sick as a motherfucker, I tried again with the potty training. As my son admired the tiny Lego Hogwarts that The Guy on my Couch (who firmly believes he will no longer be known as The Guy On My Couch once he does not, in fact, live on my couch) had lovingly put together, Alex asked to play with it.

As The Guy On My Couch tried to pick up his jaw from the floor (one does not, it appears, play with The Guy On The Couches Lego sets), where it was handily collecting cat hair, I seized the opportunity:

“I will buy you that set AND have Big Ben put it together with you, Alex.”

His eyes opened as wide as saucers as he looked at me. He’s too young to know that statements like that are always followed by a rather unpleasant, “if…”

“…if,” I continued, “you go poop in the potty.”

“No.” There was no room for argument. Guess that wasn’t the currency the kid wanted to dabble in.

“Okay, if you poop in the potty,” he giggled as I continued. The word “poop” is always cause for much ruckus and merry making in my house. “I will take you to Chuck E Cheese TODAY.”

I’d been promising them a trip there as AMELIA had already dropped her deuce in the shitter – but I was going to hold off until whatever bug is currently eating away at my soul decided that my feeble immune system was actually going to kill it. Going to a Chuck E Cheese on a Sunday is worse than waxing the cat or picking out stray pubes one at a time with a pair of tweezers.

His siblings, also in the room with me, chimed in, all pressing the kid to take a shit on the crapper. After a couple minutes, an overwrought Alex protested so loudly that we all stopped and then went about our day (read: tried to stave off a headache, while the banshees chased each other about). My eldest, Ben, continued pressing his brother.

Twenty minutes later, Alex was actually perched atop the porcelain throne and five minutes later, he dropped his first deuce.

The whole house erupted into cheers as the small ones scurried to find pants to wear to Mouse Hell, Where A Parent Is Reminded To Take Her Birth Control, to eat Mouse pizza.

Ears still ringing from the sounds of Mouse Hell, I looked at Dave sheepishly, as we pulled into the toy store after our hour in Mouse Hell (happily, I noted, firearms are not allowed there), and shrugged. I had promised the kid a zillion hundred dollar Lego kit.

“I never thought he’d do it,” I said.

“Me either,” The Daver replied.

And that is how Your Aunt Becky learned to never, ever bribe a kid – no matter how unlikely it is that aforementioned child will actually perform a feat.

Turns out, I am as stupid as I look.

How was YOUR weekend, Pranksters?

(I have to apologize – I’d been planning to start writing my Go Ask Aunt Becky column again – I have plenty of questions, but I was beyond sick on Saturday)

Since moving The Guy On My Couch onto my couch, we’ve had a lot of desserts around. We all know I can’t cook. Shit, I’ve burned Jello and tried to microwave a can of SlimFast (not recommended, by the by), and not been even the slightest bit put off by it.

But the Guy On My Couch can cook. He LIKES to cook. He also likes home repairs and would probably clean the pool if the one I had wasn’t four feet across and made entirely of plastic. And no, you cannot have him for yourself. MY Guy On The Couch.

(he doesn’t know that he’s never moving out)

Anyway, he likes making desserts for the crotch parasites, who, in turn, love him more than they love Mario. Which is a lot.

This week, he made them a cake. A white cake with chocolate buttercream frosting THAT DIDN’T COME FROM A CAN. Did you know that you can HAVE frosting without using a can?

(my next invention: aresolized frosting)(PATENT PENDING, MOTHERFUCKERS)

It’s not been a great week for Child Behavior around these here parts – I’m sick, you’re sick, we’re all sick, which means I have three extraordinarily crabby children fighting over who gets to the top of the stairs first and who gets to use what cup (despite having three identical cups).

So I haven’t been doling out the cake. I figure, why reward bad behavior? The cake has been largely untouched by the rest of the house, since, well, it looks better on your ass than mine.

(hey, have you been working out? You look HOT in those pants).

I woke up this morning to see this:

The remains of the cake.

The vultures have been steadily removing frosting from the top of the cake when I was too busy playing Angry Birds or watching dancing cat videos.

You can’t help but laugh.

Wait, what’s that next to the cake? (hint: it’s not Hong Kong Fooey)

Why, it’s one of the Twitter Klout Perks I got!

With Klout like THIS how could I ever want anything else?

Seriously, does ANYONE want a Banana Hanger? Because I keep thinking “Banana Hammock” and laughing, which means it’s going to stay in it’s box for the rest of eternity (or until I get low on my “throw/donate one thing away every day” resolution).

P.S. Klout, you are a genius.

Dear Nintendo,

I was not a Nintendo Kid. I was not a part of the Nintendo generation. I mean, technically, I should’ve been – the NES came out when I was at the absolute right age to be enchanted by your two tiny Italian plumbers, trying to save the princess from um, someone mean.

I’d have known the NAME of this “mean person” except that my parents were all “video games are stupid! They rot your brain!”

Apparently, Nintendo, that only applied to the NES games. My brother happily played his Zork games on the computer. And the following Christmas, just as Super Mario 3 came out, I was given a Sega Genesis.

For a couple of months, I happily plugged away at my Sonic The Hedgehog game, always wondering why a wee blue hedgehog cared about getting rings or beating some evil genius villain. About the time I got Kris-Kross “Make My Video,” I realized I was the only fucking kid on the block with a Sega Genesis. Everyone else had, you guessed it, a Nintendo. Or a Super Nintendo. Or a Super Nintendo hold the lettuce sub mayo.

Sure, my system had better graphics, but Mario could wear a raccoon suit! HOW COOL WAS THAT?

Answer: ludicrous.

Eventually, I ditched video games forever. I’m no gamer girl.

When I had kids, I expected they’d be like me – they’d prefer to read books (with pages!) rather than waste their time moving badly animated characters around the screen.

Nintendo, I was wrong. I was so, so wrong.

We got a Wii for Dave (under the pretense of being for Ben) after we moved into our house. Well played on that one, Nintendo. The Wii was used for awhile until, well, it wasn’t.

Then the kids switched to a Game Boy or DS or whatever the hell the hand-held video thingamabob was. Soon, I had not one, but two sons obsessing over beating level four or five-niner or whatever. I bit my tongue – I remembered being the only kid on the block unable to talk about how “cool” the “Mario raccoon suit” was. I remembered, Nintendo, feeling saddened that no one wanted to see my Kris-Kross “I Missed The Bus” video.

A couple of weeks ago, Nintendo, my eldest saved up all his cash to buy a new Wii. See, Nintendo, our old Wii had stopped working months before. I was not saddened, but my children, well, my children were prostrate (not prostate!) with grief.

And now, now Nintendo, we have a Wii. We have two Game Boys. We have Mario candy and Yoshi figurines. We have two boys who want a “Mario” themed bedroom. We have a mother who is banging her head against the wall, still saddened that no one wants to see her Kris-Kross video.

Nintendo, you are a crafty bitch.

So for now, you win, Nintendo.

I know Sega will make a comeback any day now. And when they do, the whole WORLD can see my mad video making skillz.

Love,

Aunt Becky

This is a guest post from my friend Barb, who wrote to me after she read my post on Monday, The Middling Place. She’d sent it to me as an email, but I strong-armed her into allowing me to share it with you, Pranksters. It’s a beautiful post about special needs parenting.

(I’ll probably steal it again for Band Back Together, because I am a jerk like that)

P.S. Barb, I love you.

I, too, live in the Middling Place. Off and on since November 1987.

We will never be able to be completely away from there. It is as much a part of you and I as our livers or kidneys. After a while, you will know when it’s time to be there, the Middling Place.

You feel the cold fog press over you as though someone has thrown burlap trimmed with heavy metal weights over your head. You try to peer out through the gaps, see the world around you, feel the sunshine on your face. Shivering, you watch the images of what may have been. Your child growing up “normally.” Walking, talking, and laughing. I’d even accept the tears.

You see her standing outside of Life, looking in at the others. They are growing, and dancing, sneaking kisses, driving and going to College without much thought. Does she know she is different? Does she feel what I see?

As the seconds and minutes and days and years tumble into the heap called ‘Life,’ you learn to control your tears and overwhelming sadness. ‘Fake it ’til you make it,’ you always say. But when that deafening call sounds within your heart, your soul, your entire being, you know can no longer ignore it.

You’re commodious: ‘I can handle anything” facade crashing noiselessly to the ground, landing as shrapnel at your feet.

You turn and limp wearily to the Middling Place.

You glance back at your parents, your husband, and your other children. You are regretful to leave them, but you have no choice. You are carried away by a force stronger than yourself and soon you relent and let it take you. You are being eaten alive. Gobbled by the ferocious monsters’ hunger, ripping at your flesh, tearing your heart out, laughing clamorously, and finally injecting you heavily with Guilt.

Blame and Fault become your champions, reminding you of the day you sat in the sun too long, or had a sip of your husbands wine or didn’t sleep enough or swam in that river. Her pain, her disfigurement, her disabilities, is of your own making.

Finally, struggling, stumbling, exhausted and weak, you get up on your feet. You straighten your clothes, wipe the tears, and fix your hair. We can’t allow her to see. She can’t know she is the reason.

Back where she is we practice, prepare educate and train, make plans and see ‘Professionals’. We try anything we are told will help her.

She begins to speak! One word, two words, three words in a row! We count for years! Warmed by the silly sentences she utters.

She’s walking now, that jilty gait, like she will spill over at any moment. You valiantly let her go on her own, cringing inside as you imagine what the possibilities are.

“I love you,” you tell her. ‘Yes’ she says. I want to snuggle her, wrap her in my arms and cover her with kisses. She rejects me, cringing as though I am poison.

One day though, she will bring some artwork, a picture of the two of us, she and I, maybe sing a song, and let me touch her hair. Clap, clap clapping loudly through the house will make you smile, because you know she is happy. Her enthusiastic attempts at jokes will make you laugh for days, repeating them to friends who will never understand.

This is our life.

We wish they were different, yet at the same time, we don’t ever want them to change. We love our babies.

They make us stronger, more insightful, more perceptive than before she was here.

Before the Middling Place.

When I was a kid, I had a fainting couch in my bedroom.

Not because I was prone to fainting or requiring long periods to regroup on a fashionable yet comfortable accessory, but because my parents had antiques – lots of ’em.

But I was always mystified by this contraption. When I was sick, there were two things I wanted: The Price is Right and a pillow. Later, it became a bottle of green death flavored Nyquil – for all those times you want to be comatose without a traumatic brain injury (TM).

(I should really run their advertising campaigns)

Now, of course, I have kids, which means that I can’t spend the day in a Green Death Coma. Kids have these NEEDS, you know? Like FOOD. And DIAPERS. And the Wii. No more Green Death Coma for me!

Which is usually fine. Nyquil makes me gag and generally when I’m sick one of two things happen:

1) I can sleep it off

B) I can work through it.

But I’m in the middle of a nasty withdrawal from my maintenance migraine meds (alliterations for the win!)(Carbitrol, for those who care), which means that sleep is out of the question. So is doing everything from writing a coherent blog post to taking a pee without whining.

I took yesterday off, a rare occurrence, figuring that spending a day huddled on the couch with my blanket and a Hoarders marathon, taking the time to properly moan, weep, and feel sorry for myself, in the hopes that I’d feel better today. I mean, I got shits to do. Like write crappy blog posts. And use The Twitter. And walk upright! And learn particle physics! AND LOUNGE AGAINST THE MOTHERFUCKING MACHINE!

It didn’t help.

So I will be taking today off as well, obnoxiously resenting kid germs, plotting the untimely death of Mark Zuckerberg and trying to lounge against the machine…from the couch.

If only I had more Hoarders and my fainting couch back. I bet that’d get me right again.

For Crys

I sat there, glued to the end of the couch, holding onto my new baby like she was a life vest, the light from the end table next to me bathing us in a soft, yellow hue. There were other people around, although it was late in the evening. My sister in law? My mother? I can’t remember.

My sons, too, were around. Perhaps it was just the big one. The small one, based upon my memory, should have been in bed, although perhaps he was not.

Softly, I rubbed the top of my new girl’s head, breathing in that new baby smell. Each time my hand brushed that bump on the back of her head, that hard, fluid bump, the tears formed, my eyelashes grew heavy and I began to moan. I wept into her, so scared of the future. We’d been discharged from the NICU with very little beyond a scary diagnosis and a follow-up card for a neurologist who didn’t take our insurance.

The diagnosis was new, and I refused to use Dr. Google to make myself feel worse. I knew what a “posterior encephalocele” was. I just didn’t know how dire a diagnosis that was. Until later. Much, much later.

I’d bought myself some books – pre-nightmare – to read during those boring hours I planned to nurse my new baby. Word searches, books, and a potential maid service – all things I’d busied myself thinking about, feeling they were very important, until the doctor had said the words that forever changed me – “Becky, there’s something wrong with your baby’s head.”

Now it all seemed so stupid. Who gives a shit about spot-free mirrors when you’re not sure if your new baby will be celebrating a birthday?

But I could not bring myself to talk, to open up, to any of those around me. I knew it would be in vain – if I opened my mouth, I’d just begin to cry those awful, gut-wracking sobs anyway. Lord knows I didn’t need to cry any more – I could barely see through my shiny, swollen eye sockets.

Instead, I reached down into my thoughtfully packed hospital bag and pulled out a book. I’d bought two – a luxury considering I was about to have two under two – The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and Revolutionary Road. I had no way of knowing that these were not books that someone with a medically fragile baby should be reading (one is about a mother who delivers two babies, one with Down Syndrome, who is taken by a nurse and raised separately from her brother and the other about an unhappy housewife in the 1950’s who dies after attempting to give herself an abortion).

I had no way of knowing how horrifying my choices of book were, but there I had them. And I read them both.

In the quiet of that cold February night, I read them both.

It was the beginning of what I called The Middling Place. The space between learning how quickly your world can be turned on it’s head and learning how to live sideways. The space between diagnosis and reality.

The place where you wait.

The place where, in those quiet moments, your heart feels heavy in your chest, the demons and monsters threatening your every move. The Fear a permanent resident in the back of your own skull.

The Middling Place is a lonely place – a secret place, a land of tears, inhabited by you and you alone. Other people may drift nearby, stuck in their own Middling Place, but yours is a solitary land. Some moments, they’re filled with the purest of joy. Others with an unending sorrow.

It’s not always a bad place, The Middling Place, but in those quiet moments, the voice in your head reminds you of how fucked up this really is, your skin crawls and your guts threaten to expel themselves any way they can. You’ve tumbled down the rabbit hole, Alice, and why yes, I’d like a cup of tea – two lumps, no milk, if you please.

And you wait.

I sat there, on my freshly cleaned couch (thank you o! gods of steam cleaners), in a group of my very best friends. We were eating the greasiest of greasy pizza, occasionally stopping to fetch a rogue binkie or wipe a dirty face. We laughed, talking about the times we’d shared, where our lives had randomly found us, pausing now and again to wipe tears from our eyes.

These people, my friends – my very best friends – they’d flown in from all over the country to celebrate my daughter’s birthday with me. They didn’t have to. I didn’t have to threaten them with a tube sock full of quarters. They did it because they wanted to be there with me, with us, together.

I’d never felt quite so at home in my living room.

It had been so long since I’d sat in my home, surrounded by people who know me as I am, fucked up bits and all, and laughed so hard that I was afraid I was going to whiz myself.

Seeing packages that my friends, my Pranksters, had sent for my daughter, knowing they’d cared enough to send her something for her third birthday, it reminded me of the connections. How lucky I’ve been to know so many wonderful people.

Because I am.

Lucky, that is.

Back when using the Internet cost approximately nine bucks a minute and I used it to fuck with people in chat rooms (oh, like you didn’t), I’d never really understood that there were people behind those words. Even as a blogger, back in 2003, the very notion that the words I hastily strung together would be read by another person was mind-boggling. I assumed my site was read by porn bots trying to increase my penis size, not living, breathing people (I assume that the un-dead don’t have internet access, but I could be mistaken).

I have never been so happy to be wrong. No, not about the un-dead.

When I get asked about making money blogging, after I stop laughing, I’m always a little bit…stung. Not because I don’t understand the desire to make a little cash on the side, but because to me, it’s not what it’s about.

I’ll take the friends I’ve made, the connections I’ve formed over a stack of cash any day.

A pony on roller skates, tho…well, maybe not so much.

A present from my very best friends who work with me on Band Back Together.

(if you’re a member of the Band and would like to vote for Band Back Together at the Weblog Awards, you may do so here. MWV is nominated too, which OMG, but The Band deserves the award for all of the bravery they’ve poured into our site.)