I got a bill in the mail last week, which is highly unsurprising, because between my “Get out of -ologist free card” I’m pretty much always sending off some payment or another. So it was with exactly NO emotion whatsoever that I opened a bill from the big umbrella corporation that is home to most of my doctors.
When I put it THAT way, it sounds so sinister.
Anyway.
I opened up a bill, looked at the dates of services, squinched up my eyebrows, wondering how my daughter had walked herself to the doctor, and then looked BACK at the dates of service and realized they were asking for a co-pay from last year.
From one of her many pre-surgical neurologist appointments. The dates just happened to coincide with this month, minus a year.
Somehow, in all of the hustle and bustle of taking our daughter to and from the doctor every day or two, our daughter–whose age was still measured in days–I’d somehow forgotten this one, single co-pay. Everything else has been long paid off, all the receipts and insurance pre-authorizations shoved into a manila folder somewhere.
It’s marked maybe “Amelia.” Or “encephalocele.” Or maybe it says nothing. It could say “Happy Birthday, Steve;” I don’t actually know. There are thousands of cross-sectional pictures of her brain in that folder too, should she ever want to see how her skull wasn’t properly put together, or where her brain hung out of the back of her head.
I thought about what a difference a year makes as I wrote out the check yesterday, because it’s been almost a year since my daughter had her brain surgery. I’m the same person who wrote,
“I cannot break this feeling of doom and foreboding. I cannot imagine a life past next Thursday one way or another. I cannot believe that I am lucky enough to have this baby AND KEEP HER.”
I wish I could go back and give myself a huge reassuring hug because I remember how horribly terrified I was that she was going to pass on the table. If I could do anything, I’d go back and do that.
And here she is now, my daughter, the girl with curls like a halo. The one who regularly breaks the bones of her foe and then sucks down the marrow for a snack. My ass-kickin’ little girl.
Not to be outdone by her oldest brother, she helps wash walls, even if it’s only with a wee Playmobil brush. Also: planning on how to remove that wall with her teeth. Because OBVIOUSLY.
She even helps with laundry. If by “helping” you mean, mischievously throwing all the “too small” clothes I’d sorted carefully out all over the house with her brother so that they could roll around in them. Which, I have to say, may have made my too-small heart grow 30 sizes.
Oh Amelia Grace, how wonderful life is with you in our world. We couldn’t imagine it any other way.
My best friend’s husband, who is a teacher, a married man, and a father of 2, was recently arrested for having “inappropriate” email contact with a 17-year-old girl. I think it’s horrific and told my best friend my honest feelings the day the story broke.
She is now mad at me because I’m not being supportive of her hubby and thinks I’m being judgmental. Keep in mind that she and he admitted the entire thing was true. I haven’t heard from her in a week and I’m not sure what to do. I realize now I should have kept my opinion to myself.
Any idea how to get the friendship back on track? Or should I just stay away?
Oh Gentle Reader, what a fucked up situation.
I always think about the parents of mass murderers, as they go on trial. The ones that weren’t shitty parents who chained their kids to a wall, you know? The parents who genuinely did a good job, but whose children were just born bad and ended up smashing heads in.
Then, when Judgment Day comes, you’ve got the whole world looking at you like “what did YOU DO to make such a monster?”
I think about that a lot. (I worked in juvenile prison for awhile)
In this case, no one wins. It’s terrible. I can’t imagine finding out that my husband–the father of my children–was carrying on inappropriately with a child. That’s got to be so twisted.
In this case, Gentle Reader, I think you need to put aside whatever feelings you have about your friend’s husband because what’s going with her isn’t about your feelings, and you need to apologize to her. She needs to feel less like the world is against her and more like someone is in her corner.
Her life has been turned upside down, and no matter how fucked up her husband is, this is about her. You don’t need to be supportive of him, you need to be supportive of her. Her head has got to be reeling right now. She’ll come to her senses.
If she doesn’t, well, I think it’s time to reevaluate your friendship.
What are your top ten favorite books to read to each of your kids, and why?
Now, if my children could handle reading books in a non-obsessive manner, I’d probably be able to answer this one, question, oh Internet, my Internet. But my children have sucked all joy out of each and every reading of Goodnight Moon and gnarfed the marrow from even such classics as Baby, Make Me Breakfast with their endless repetition.
I’m looking forward to getting past this particular stage with the small ones.
Benjamin loves the Captain Underpants, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Magic Treehouse, and Harry Potter Books and has read (I think) most of them.
I’m partial to the Dr. Seuss books, but my children can never sit still long enough to enjoy them.
*gets up to run laps around the house*
*pets the dog*
*chases the cat*
I have no idea where they get their inability to sit still from. I blame The Daver.
Okay, so I know our moms grew up during the sexual revolution and were all bra burny and such but today she’s 55. AND…when it was all going on in the 60’s and 70’s, she partook from an arms length. Don’t get me wrong, she did her fair share of The Pot, but was always well groomed and well dressed.
TODAY, however, my moms uniform is a tight cotton tee, jeans (that may or may not be from the women’s section), walmart slip-on tennis shoes, and NO BRA! She needs a bra. How on earth do I tell my mother that her melons need a sling and her wardrobe sucks? I am honestly embarrassed to go anywhere that might be even the slightest bit chilly with her.
So your mom needs an over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder, huh? And a complete makeover, it sounds like, because she’s sort of given up on trying to be attractive.
Well, here’s what worked for my dad, who, I should add, did NOT need a bra.
My dad, God Love Him, is a sucker for a bargain, and not because he doesn’t have money. Like, you see something on sale, and my dad is ALL fucking about it even if he doesn’t REALLY need it or if it actually like, FIT him or anything. So he was drawn to Kohl’s like a moth to flame when he realized that the store was always on sale.
I realized that my father had gone from looking like a respectable pharmacist to like Bozo the Clown’s sidekick, Joe, The Gimp (don’t feel too bad, my dad can take it. He raised me to be Your Aunt Becky, after all). It was painful to be near him because his clothes were so bright, garish, and fucking ugly.
So my brother, who shops only at Brooks Brothers and Ralph Lauren and I formulated a plan and one holiday we implemented it: we staged an Intervention.
“Dad,” I said very, very seriously. “Aaron and I have to talk to you. You can never shop at Kohl’s again. In fact, we’re taking all of your horrible patterned shirts and we’re donating them to some golf league somewhere.”
“What?” He gasped.
“Yes.” My brother continued soberly. “Dad, you cannot continue on like this. No one wants to be seen next to you. We all pretend like we don’t know you when we go out together.”
“You aren’t serious!” My dad was shocked.
“WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!” I cried. “My children are afraid of your clothes! Look! Mimi just puked on herself after she saw your shirt!”
He sat there, thinking. Finally he spoke, “All right. If you guys say so.”
Dave, Aaron, Joy (my sister in law) and I all simultaneously said “YES!!” so loudly that Mimi jumped.
It’s actually worked. I mean, he still teases us about it. Like today when I asked them to watch the kids so we could go shopping for some clothes for Dave, he’s all “I hear Kohl’s has a great sale going on!” But he hasn’t been back.
So maybe that’s your best course of action. An INTERVENTION.
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As always, Merry Pranksters, fill in where I’ve left off in the comments. And feel free to submit YOUR burning questions to Your Aunt Becky through the form on the sidebar (under Pages).
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And remember, whether you’re going to BlogHer or not, we need your votes!! Aunt Becky, Marinka, Wendi, and I (of The Mouthy Housewives and Mommy Wants Vodka) have put in for a Room of our Own on how to create a successful, entertaining advice site.
So please just click here, log on to BlogHer and then click “I would attend this session” (it’s just above the title: Dear Abby 2.0). After you click it it will miraculously say “I would not attend this session.” This means that your vote for the session has been successfully registered. Thank you!
The Daver: “I was reading your friend’s blog, and she was talking about how she’d gotten some nasty look from some parent when she said she was taking her kid to McDonald’s.”
Aunt Becky: “Ha! Figures.”
The Daver: “I said that ‘The Daver would give them a McSmackdown.'”
Aunt Becky: “Totally, yo. What the hell is wrong with McDonald’s once in awhile? Let kids be kids, man.”
The Daver: “Exactly! People like that can take their organic bento boxes and shove them up their asses.”
Aunt Becky: “I tweeted last night that whomever wrote the ‘I could be your hero baby’ song was singing about Chicken McNuggets. And I meant it.”
The Daver: “That’s fucked up.”
Aunt Becky: “The only thing wrong with McDonald’s is the ball pits. They always smell like pee.”
The Daver: “What the hell are you talking about?”
Aunt Becky: “You never noticed that?”
The Daver: “No.”
Aunt Becky: “Dude. Kids are always whizzing in the ball pits. It’s disgusting.”
The Daver: “….”
Aunt Becky: “It’s kind of awesome if you don’t play in there.”
The Daver: “….”
Aunt Becky: “You totally played in the pee balls, didn’t you? That sucks.”
The Daver: “….”
Aunt Becky: “That’s okay. I think there’s some bleach leftover from the time I accidentally saw pictures of Carrot Top naked. You can bathe with that.”
The Daver: “I have a sudden hankering for a Shamrock Shake.”
I’m always amazed when my kids do something clever. It’s not that I don’t think they’re smart…okay maybe it is. But I don’t really think any kids are smart. Shit, I wasn’t smart as a kid. Unless you call eating an entire tub of frosting with my tongue smart, which you cannot unless you’re a lying liar who lies.
People who are all “my kid is a fucking GENIUS!” make me sort of itchy because it’s very clear that they’re annoying.
Kids aren’t SUPPOSED to be smart because they’re kids. They’re supposed to do dumbass things like jump off the back of the couch onto their heads because it seemed like a good idea and they’re supposed to eat toothpaste because it’s tasty and they’re supposed to annoy the hell out of you by asking you over and over things like “WHERE’S MY HAND?” even though it is VERY CLEARLY attached to their arm.
They’re kids.
So when mine do things that are reasonably smart, I’m all “who the hell ARE you short people?”
But my middle son, the one that I’ve pegged to be a mini-Chris Farley at the ripe age of 2, because he routinely runs into walls on purpose so that he can fall down, only to spring back up and yell “I’M OKAY!!” he appears to have developed some odd habits.
I may have to stop lovingly calling him “Buckethead” and start calling him “The Professor.”
In the past month or so, he’s developed an obsession with two things. Two weird, maybe related, but nonetheless, strange things. Perhaps all of the jumping off the couch onto his head has jangled something loose. Because he now is infatuated with:
This is the second of my children to take a more than passing interest in the planets (my first son could, by Alex’s age, name all 63 of Jupiter’s moons), and before you think that I’m somehow indoctrinating them with my own adoration of cosmology, let me assure you that I am not THAT kind of scientist. I’m a virus kinda girl, myself.
Ben has since grown out of his love of the planets and Alex has fallen headfirst in love all on his own. It’s beyond weird.
So watch out, Carl Sagan. Alex Harks is coming for you.
I distinctly remember being in the 5th grade, sitting around at the end of class picnic and having to listen to everyone else prattle on about what they were going to “be” when they grew up. I only knew I wanted to be something that made me boatloads of cash without doing any actual work. What job that was, I had no idea.
To be honest, at 10 years old, I’d never thought about future career choices.
So when it came to me, I simply copied whatever the person before me said. It happened to be “a secretary.” At age 10, I wanted to “be a secretary when I grew up.”
I didn’t know what a secretary did, only that it saved me from saying “something that made me fistwads of cash,” or worse, stuttering blankly. Everyone else seemed so sure of what they wanted to do.
Every time I said that I wanted to be a doctor, people sort of patted me on the head and said a condescending “there there.” But a secretary, that seemed to be an okay choice. I turned 10, by the way, in 1990.
I never did find out what a secretary did until I became a nurse case manager in 2006, and I didn’t really let anyone deter my decision to become a doctor until I had a bouncing baby crotch parasite make that decision for me.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, because I was always at the top of my science classes, but that it just didn’t make any sense. Especially with single motherhood looming. So nursing it was, and nursing I hated.
I’ve left the sort of nebulous idea of what I was going to be when I grew up idea to fester until I really had time to pursue it. I plan to go back to school to get my PhD in virology (study of viruses)(I make myself sound so nerdly)(wanna make out?) when the kids are older. But for now, I’m making a go at writing.
And because I’ve never been able to be very successful at anything that I’ve done besides sit at home and eat bon-bons* and watch soap operas, I feel like I need to make a success out of myself.
To prove to myself that I cando something.
Maybe that sounds dumb, I don’t know. But because I’ve never really had the opportunity to have some sort of career that I actually liked or felt like I could be any good at, I am earnestly saccharine about making this work. And I will make it work because that’s what I do: I make impossible situations work. Eventually.
(Like the time I ate a whole box of cupcakes in a day)
I don’t go to work and have co-workers and meetings and bosses and feedback and a desk and a commute and coffee breaks and status updates and a help(less) desk and a supply closet. Sometimes I wish I did.
My day is surrounded by small people who poop their pants and teeth on my legs. I love them with all my heart, but I love me too.
I’ve been beating myself about the head with a mallet trying to figure out how I’m going to make something of myself. What I’m going to make out of myself.
I flash back to the 5th grade picnic every time The Daver and I have the same conversation (tri-weekly) that I had that warm, spring day:
The Daver: “What are you going to do? Because you’re miserable here.”
Aunt Becky: “Is this a multiple choice question? I can totally beat those just by guessing. I’ll go with letter C. Always best to go with C.”
The Daver: “I’m serious, Becky.”
Aunt Becky: “So am I, The Daver. C is always the way to go**.”
The Daver: “You need to figure out what to do with your life.”
Aunt Becky: “Wow! Since you put it THAT way! Okay. I’ll draw up a list of options.”
(draws a stick figure of The Daver with Aunt Becky cutting off his head. Doodles blood spurting all over the page. The draws “HEEELLLPPP MEEEEE! I’M SOOORRRYYY! bubble coming from his mouth)
The Daver: “Are you done?”
Aunt Becky: “Yep. I figured it ALL out.”
(wanders off)
It’s not that I don’t know what I want to do with my life, or even how I want to go about doing it, it’s just that these things take time. I’m a writer and the market for writers–even those with agents–isn’t hugely sprawling right now. So I wait.
I sharpen my knife, I pollute the Internet, I try to get my name out there without committing murder and I wait. Eventually, things will happen. My Empire is being assembled.
Bit by bit.
What else should I do while I wait, Pranksters? Because Daver’s right, I can’t live like this forever. I need stuff-n-things to do. Interview me, give me jobs, make me do things, help me, Band of Pranksters, I beg of you. (At least until the weather warms up.)
*WTF is a bon-bon?
**this is a lie.
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I am totally going to make more of those cards available for (free) download. I’m in the middle of a site redesign, and I’ll have a whole page devoted to it because honestly, writing those was more fun than I’ve had in ages. BUT, I need to find more of the post cards that are FREE and not copyrighted.
So, Merry Pranksters, if you know where a certain Aunt Becky can find those (or if you want to make the images yourself and give them to me to use), it’s on like Donkey Kong.
If I were the sort of person that kept a day planner (hint, I’m not), the month of February would have exactly one task: SURVIVE. I don’t mean to sound all OH THE HUMANITY!! on you, it’s just the one month of the year where things just go horribly wrong.
If Caesar was all “Beware the ides of March,” Aunt Becky is all “Beware the month of February.”
Anyway, so I’m kind of in a bad place. I’m feeling pretty low because it’s Chicago and Ass outside right now and tired of myself and tired of being inside and kinda ready to get a sex change and move to Detroit. It seems like a wise idea, right? Don’t answer that.
So last night, I was lying in bed, not sleeping because that’s what people who have insomnia do: they lay in bed and they don’t sleep.
When I lay there, I think of a couple of different things:
1) I try to imagine all of the ways I’d kill the people who come up with the commercial jingles that run in an ever-loving loop in my head while I am lying there, not fucking sleeping. High on my list are the Daisy Sour Cream people and whomever cast Jamie Lee Curtis in the Activia commercial.
Because I’ll give you a motherfucking dollop of Daisy with my glock.
Also, I don’t want to think of your colon, Jamie Lee Curtis. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I don’t want to think of your COLON.
B) I think of all the words I will ban when I rule the world. Like hymen. And moist. And juxtapose. Because there was this AWFUL girl who sat at my lunch table in high school who was a pseudo-intellectual assbag who was all “juxtapose” ALL THE TIME.
Like, I could eat a sandwich and she’d be all “that sandwich is a juxtaposition of life.” And then I wanted to kill myself. Maybe with a bomb.
Last night, though, because I was feeling particularly vitriolic, I decided that what I needed to do was to create a line of horrible greeting cards for people that I hate. Not like funny cards designed to make you laugh, but cards that say what I really WANT to say.
I’m pretty sure it’s a cash cow waiting to happen. Or at the very least, it’s going to make damn sure you never have to waste a stamp on someone you hate again.
(yes, I made these cards)(no, not the PICTURES. What do you think I am, TALENTED!?! Yeah. RIGHT.)
I’m sure with all of the sleepless nights I have, I could go on and on and on and on. The market will be huge for my cards, I can feel it.
I’m off to wait for Hallmark’s call. I’m positive they’ll be all over my idea.
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I’m over at Toy With Me, talking about weird guys I want to have The Sex with. I just realized that I left my new husband David Cook off there which pretty much makes me the worst wife ever. Which, DUH.
While I would never ask specifically to re-live college, I must admit that my sophomore year was a metric ton of fun. And, if I’m being brutally honest, a good portion of it was because your very own Aunt Becky had moved in down the hall.
This would have been apropos of nothing, except that her roommate, It Means Butterfly, was all “Ooh, sure you can smoke in here!” and then she was all “Just kidding, I hate you!” and so Becky would spend a lot of time smoking having deep and academic discussions in my dorm room while spending every waking moment stealing my beer.
As an aside, I wish I could tell you that she was exaggerating the roommate stories (she’s posted them here, here, and here), but she’s not. I would be the first one in line to call her out for such exaggerations, but not only is Becky not exaggerating, that bitch broke my bubble chair. TWICE.
It’s because of all that smoking deep and meaningful conversation that I have been asked to tell you about the time we managed to put our hands on some fake IDs and headed to the local bar had such deep and meaningful academic conversation that we stayed up all night learning.
OK, I’m not fooling anyone. I’ll drop the act.
So, as Becky mentioned (here), she met our friend J the first week or so of college and developed a small crush on him. J was an RA on another floor in our building, and through some miracle, he was the only RA with common sense and decided not to bust the freshman on his floor who was selling fake IDs. I think it had to do with the laws of supply and demand: this kid had a supply, and J had two friends who had a demand.
J hooked us up with two fake IDs. Actually, this is a misnomer: they were real, honest-to-goodness, State of Illinois IDs. It just so happened that the IDs in question were not our IDs.
All things considered, Becky’s ID wasn’t that bad. The woman in the picture resembled her in as much as her current ID resembles her (which is to say only sort of), but she was about the right height, about the right weight, and yes, the ID said that she was in her 30s (we were 19), but it wasn’t that egregious an error and really, we were only going to the local bar. If we’d had a sheet of paper that said “SRSLY, I’Z B 21!” they probably would have let us in.
My ID, on the other hand, resembled me only in the sense that the woman in the picture – a woman with an unpronounceable Greek name – had long dark hair. At the time, I also had long dark hair. The ID said that I was in my late 30s (I can pass for older), that I was 5’2″, and 120lbs. I am 5’10” in flats and I usually wear 3″ heels.
I would kill to be 120, but I haven’t seen 120 since I was in jr. high. The icing on this ID cake was that the woman in the ID had brown eyes, and my eyes are not brown. It was only because we were going to the local bar and the local liquor store that the IDs were worth anything at all.
Best of all, the IDs only cost us $20 and we didn’t have to go down to 26th and California to get them. For those of you not from Chicago: in 1999, you did not want to go down to 26th and California. Just trust me here.
And so, it was because of these totally glamorous and completely valid (ha!) IDs that Becky, J and I ended up at the local college bar every Wednesday night.
Yes, to have long, deep, and meaningful academic conversations. Certainly not to drink underage! Oh, no, not us.
In an effort to look more like our IDs, we would don our sluttiest bar outfits, our 3″ heels, and break out every stitch of makeup we owned between the two of us. Now, I never let J do my makeup, but Becky, who has issues saying ‘no’, gave in and allowed J to do her makeup.
After an hour or so of careful consideration and conjecture on which shade of eye shadow went best with Becky’s outfit, Becky would emerge from her dorm room looking, well, like a tranny who just finished Theatre Makeup School.
J, proud of himself, would ask for compliments and I would say things like “Wow! You don’t look like a hooker!” and we would walk to the local bar and get our drink on.
Our motives were clear: Becky wanted to get away from It Means Butterfly, who would never join us in any kind of adventure (she once interrupted a date I was on to see if I could fix her computer. True story.). J wanted to convince himself that he was straight by hanging out with two beautiful women. I was majoring in English Literature, which, if you don’t know, means that I am destined to develop a drinking problem.
Here’s the problem with my drinking problem: I can hold my liquor.
Here’s the problem with my drinking problem, coupled with being Italian: not only can I hold my liquor, I’m fucking good at pushing it on everyone else.
Here’s the problem with my drinking problem, plus being Italian, plus being out with Becky and J: Becky and J are lightweights.
Light. Weights. As in, “Here, sniff this! Oh, whoops, let me roll you home.”
After a round or two of drinks, when J would be asking me whether or not I had planned on attending my 8:00 Poli Sci class, I would start singing “C is for Cookie!” and convince both Becky and J to have another round with me. And not that pussy rum and coke shit, either, dude. Seriously, what is that crap? Bartender! We need dirty martinis!
The problem with my drinking problem is that I never learned and when 2:00am rolled around and I decided that there were only six hours between me and a Poli Sci class where the gross guy who sat behind me hit on me relentlessly (yay), I would round up Becky and J and tell them that it was time to stumble home.
Stumble, of course, was a relative term. I could still walk in my 3″ heels just fine. Becky and J, however, could usually no longer stand.
The three block walk back to our dorm was much like trying to herd cats. I would literally push Becky and J toward our dorm (sometimes through 2′ of snow, and yes, still in heels), and then run to get in front of them to stop them before they would walk out into a street. The two of them were ra-dick-you-lus, stumbling, tripping (but never puking), and singing “C is for Cookie!” with me at the top of their lungs.
It was obnoxious and cute in the bar when I did it. It was not so cute when the homeless guys drinking 40s took one look at us and saw that we had neon signs screaming “EASY TARGET” flashing over our heads.
(Seriously, the fact that we survived college in and of it self deserves a diploma. I digress.)
Yeah, you disagree? Well, due to the magic of You Tube, I can give you a glimpse into exactly how obnoxious we were:
Yup, that was us. Drunk, decked out for the bar, and singing Sesame Street.
Oh, yeah, why “C is for Cookie!”, you ask? Because that’s what I managed to squeak out in PoliSci.
I’m an eater. If I’m happy, sad, depressed, bored, tired or anything else…I tend to eat. While I am overweight, I’m not obese, so many people probably don’t realize that I have a problem.
I’ve known for awhile – but really have no clue how to fix it. Any ideas??
Oh Gentle Reader, it sounds to me like you’re a compulsive eater. I’m compulsive too, so I get that, don’t think I’m being all judge-mc-Aunt Becky here (you should see my orchids)(or my blog).
But the thing is, you obviously know it’s not healthy because it’s not, and you need to fix it. So baby steps, right? First, you need to put your finger on why you’re eating and figure out your triggers and learn to avoid them. As someone who has successfully quit smoking, I know this works.
Change your routine.
You’re using food (smokers use cigarettes, alcoholics use booze, pill-hounds pop pills) to fill some other emotional void and that’s not going to work forever. It’s not healthy. So figure out what it is, which, it sounds like you have, and try and channel it into something else.
Find some other healthy things that bring you joy and turn those into your void fillers. Pick harmless stuff and do that. Read a book. Garden. Blog. Take a walk. The point is, you need to get your mind off of food and on to something else. Distraction is key.
There are some really wholesome things to do that involve your hands and your head. (have you seen my orchids?)
Chew some gum and work on some cross stitching (don’t diss the cross-stitching, people). Plan your meals on a schedule and when you catch yourself reaching for the bag of chips ask yourself if you’re REALLY hungry or if you’re using them as a crutch.
If that doesn’t help, try and talk to someone professionally. I wish you luck, because I understand compulsions completely. I’m lucky mine are so wholesome that I’m practically all “Golly GEE, Mister*!!”
I have recently become friends with someone and after a few months of really enjoying hanging out with she and her husband and kid, my wife and I have started noticing a habit we are not fond of. My friend tends to make fun of people everywhere we go.
At first for me this was just a sort of funny, not meaning any harm thing, but lately I see how she does it a lot, and I don’t really like it. It was brought to my attention because her kid and mine are at the same daycare, and she will very quickly decide she doesn’t like one of the other parents. The main one is a mom whom she held the door for a few times and the other mom never acknowledged it. Not a big deal to me, but for her now she feels it is ok to bad mouth this woman to us, where the other mom can hear it.
To me, that is crossing a line into being mean to someone who has really not done anything bad. Sure, she was rude on a few occasions and did not say thanks for holding the door, but seriously, let’s be adults. Anyhow, this has caused me to see how much she insults everyone around us, and gets super gossipy about the other kids and parents at daycare.
With the ones she likes, she goes out of her way to get e-mail addresses so we can include them in park outings and such, so she can be really nice, and I do truly like her. I think mainly she just needs to feel more secure so she won’t feel the need to put down others so much.
My dilemma is how to handle it when she is whispering and laughing her insults about the other parents at the park? I don’t want to confront her and hurt her feelings or ruin our friendship, but I don’t want to participate either. If I say nothing I’m afraid it will be awkward. Any ideas?
Well, now, I’m all for being bitchy now and again, but in this situation I’m afraid you’re stuck between a rock and a bigger rock. I mean, if you do nothing, you’re alienating the people that don’t really deserve it by proxy. And if you butt up against your friend, you’re an ass in her eyes.
If I were you I’d keep your mouth shut and not badmouth anyone who didn’t deserve it. It’s bad karma.
And really, I know that this person is your friend, but my advice is to tread lightly around her. I’ve known people like this before and I’ve never been able to maintain friendships with them for very long.
Anyone who notes faults in others is probably turning around to note fault in me, too, when my back is turned. Which, incidentally, is what happened every time with the people I knew who were like this. That makes it hard to have a real friendship.
I don’t doubt that it is a lack of self-esteem on her part, but I don’t want you to get sucked down the rabbit hole. Watch yourself, my friend.
Dear Aunt Becky-
I have a neighbor who happens to be a pretty decent friend with two kids.. One of which is an adorable 2 year old and the other is SATAN. Seriously a straight-jacket worthy psycho 6 year old. I cannot stand being around him because he is mean to my 3 year old and not in a..”oh he’s just a typically six year old kind of way. More like mean in a devil’s spawn kind of way. The problem is my friend asks me to babysit ALL of the time and I’m running out of excuses. Any suggestions on shutting down the babysitting thing all together?
Thanks
I love situations where you can’t tell your friend that you hate their kid. It’s so honest and refreshing. Like eating a poo sandwich!
I feel for you, duder. You don’t want to babysit and you don’t want your kid around the hell beast, because no matter what sort of emotional problems he has, that’s really not your problem.
It’s times like this when you are left no option but to tell the truth: you can’t handle children older than your own. It’s not quite the truth, but it’s not really a lie. Like that Britney song ‘I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman.’ Or…something.
You need to make up some sort of reason that’s believable enough (that require you saying “I don’t want to deal with your kid”) that doesn’t have you scrambling every time you see her number on your caller ID. Because really, you don’t owe her the favor of babysitting. There are babysitting SERVICES for that sort of thing. And even they can say “no.”
Then you can hand her the number for a Sitter City and be done with it.
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As always, The Internet, please fill in anywhere that I left off in the comments.
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And have a happy and safe Valentine’s Day and whatever you do, don’t forget that women prefer men with shaved balls. I am going to grow old, dimply and floppy with you, The Internet.
My neurologist looks like he stepped off a the set of a Western. I wouldn’t be surprised if, at any moment, he said “Saddle up, Pardner.” In fact, I’m kind of hoping for it. It beats the shit out of all the depressing options for different options for treating my My Grains.
Also, I have diagnosed him with GERD. I can’t remember anything about Nursing Diagnosis, but I remember most of the medical diagnoses we learned to get INTO nursing school.
My neurologist has GERD (gastroesophogeal reflux disease). I’m sure of it. I sort of want to tell him. I wonder if he knows…
Wow, these drugs all have incredible side effects, and in spite of the fact that he’s not wearing a fringe jacket or a gun holster and is telling me about drugs that may kill me, I really, really like my neurologist. This makes my current tally for neuros that I like at 3/3. Must be a record.
Okay, after all of that, we’re going to increase my Topamax dosage and add in a non-narcotic. Who knew narcotics could change headaches? Also, do you think he thought it was weird that I insisted that I DIDN’T WANT VICODIN over and over?
I was kind of the antithesis of drug-seeking behavior.
I was all “No, doctor who normally gives out pain meds, don’t give me drugs!” I probably said it 50 times. Probably the opposite of what he normally gets. Heh.
Oh shit. Now he’s asking me what I do for a living. Does “lazily pollute the Internet count?”
Phew. Went with “writer.” That’s an odd question.
OH. Now I see why. He’s warning me that I’m about to get stupider. Except he said it all fancy-like. “Cognitive impairment.” 1 out of 4 patients may experience cognitive impairment.
Well, now, I’m officially screwed.
Now I’m laughing like the village idiot. I mean, how do you get much dumber than this? Tears are coursing down my cheeks because I’m laughing so hard and the doctor is beginning to look alarmed.
Finally I catch my breath and explain that my stupidity is okay because no one’s lives are at stake with my job anymore. Then I take my new script, walk into several walls, and try to get into 3 cars that are not my own before realizing that I sold that particular car 5 years ago.
But the guy totally has GERD. For sure. I should call him and tell him so.
I knew of her before I knew her. That’s the mark of a truly great person, I think.
And she had that ability to make people feel like they’d known her forever. In my case, I kind of had known her forever. Since she was 13 and I was 14, which pretty much made us sisters for awhile.
I cried for a solid month straight after she died, two years ago today. Unable to make the silliest decisions, I was overtaken my my grief. I never ended up sending flowers to her funeral, not because I didn’t try and pick some out–I sat for hours flipping through flower websites–but because I couldn’t make up my mind.
Did the “Eternally Yours” scream out “I can’t believe you’re fucking dead?” Or perhaps, “Gentle Thoughts” bouquet might be more appropriate for someone who, at age 26, died of natural causes in her sleep, leaving behind her two sons. Someone else should have told me which to choose, because I was useless.
In the end, I chose nothing, because nothing could properly express how I felt about losing my friend Stef. Shit, I still can’t write about it. This stupid fucking post won’t capture the half of who she was. Because you can’t capture her essence.
By being her friend, you were a better person. She had a sparkle to her, not a quality most of us have, and if you were with her for very long, it rubbed off on you and for awhile, you were better too.
For years, I’d have gladly traded places with her without hesitating. She was everything I didn’t think I could be: strong and solid, funny and sweet. If she’d been a bitch, it would have been easy to be jealous of her, but she wasn’t.
During a time when I had no one, I had Stef. When I was pregnant with Ben, and his father sought refuge in another vagina, Stef was the one person who not only comforted me, as all of my “friends” turned against me for this transgression (obviously my fault. The situation sucked) but then chewed the vagina a new, well, asshole.
There aren’t a lot of friends who will do that for someone. Or, if there are, I don’t have them.
She sat with me day after day during my pregnancy with Ben, co-hosted my baby shower and told me that I looked beautiful 50 pounds overweight after I delivered. That’s a real friend.
Stef died in her sleep after coming home from her second stint in rehab.
I don’t regret not reaching out to her and Doing Something, because, to be honest, after having been through 2 alcoholic parents, I know damn well that no matter how nice Intervention makes it look, for ever success story, the addict has to WANT change.
So sitting her down and saying “you need to CHANGE” would have done nothing. I can’t accept responsibility for her death.
I can accept responsibility for not telling her that I loved her before she passed. I never, ever thought that I’d be here, telling The Internet that I wish I’d been able to tell my friend one last time that I loved her.
Because she was so, so loved.
Her funeral was standing room only. The room was filled with mourners who wept over her open coffin. All of us crying for her, for us, for her children, listening to the string trio weep as they played the Stones song “As Tears Go By” hoping that maybe her spirit was in the room and could hear us tell her in death what we hadn’t in life.
The world is a worse, colder place without her. This much I know.
