It’s BOOBS week over at Toy With Me, and I’m talking about the one awesome legacy my children left me. And no, I’m not talking about my accordion-like stomach folds, which, I admit are dead sexy.

(want to make out?)

As always, you have an idea for a future topic for a column over there, please, drop me an email to aunt.becky.sucks@gmail.com or leave me a comment.

Click the smiling beaver to be whisked away:

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Aunt Becky: “Just so you know, I found one of your pubes on the baby’s high chair today. It was disturbing. I know you didn’t put it there or anything, but still. EW.”

The Daver (totally not listening): “AWESOME.”

Aunt Becky: “So NOT full of The Awesome. That’s full of The Awful.

The Daver: “Whatever, that’s full of The Awesome. I’m marking my territory.”

Aunt Becky: “You leave a trail of those around the house and it’s gross. You’re shedding pubes. It’s like The Trail of Tears.”

The Daver: “Dude, no way. That’s a Treasure Trail.”

Aunt Becky: *shudders*

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And YAY for contests that are annoying and make me annoy you a lot and so I petition you loudly to vote for me because that is what blogs are for, unless you count being full of self-important bluster, which, of course, obviously.

I’m up for this award you should vote for me. And while you’re there, you should vote for me for this one too.

And then you should vote for me here, too.

Because if you do that? I will show you a picture of the best Halloween costume I ever dressed up in. And this requires me doing actual work to go and find the picture at my parents house.

(obviously, you should cue the violins and cry tears for me at all of the pain and suffering you’re putting me through by making me work. o! the humanity!)

I’ll give you a hint: there were several people who didn’t know me and had no idea I was dressed up. It was FANTASTIC. Man, you’re NEVER gonna guess what it was. I feel like I should tell you or something because seriously, it was THAT good.

*bites knuckles impatiently*

I suck at secrets and I can hardly wait to tell you. I imagine tomorrow you’ll see what this is, so vote.

Please?

Won’t SOMEONE think of the children?!?

Amelia, it was clear by our lack of preparation, was our third child. I think it wasn’t until week 34 or 35 that we set up anything that we could have brought a child home to, having barely put them away for Child Number 2. Mostly because we didn’t have anywhere to put her and partially because we are lazy.

Let me back up (Ima let you finish) and give you a brief rundown of the layout of the land.

We technically have a 4 bedroom house.

Upstairs are three bedrooms:

1) Master Bedroom: currently occupied by 1 Aunt Becky and 1 The Daver which is stupidly big. Not us, but the room, you know. It’s a poor design, and should have been 2 rooms, but will probably be bedroom PLUS office or bedroom PLUS porn den or something.

Had originally thought to be converted into boys room until it was determined that the space would never be used by the boys as play space.

2) Ben’s Room: it’s a medium sized bedroom full of the weird stuff my son cannot manage to part with. This is only noted because this is the same child who FREQUENTLY comes through the house saying “when I grow up, MY house is gonna be SUPER organized.”

Judging by the back issues of catalogs and his inability to throw away anything up to and including: tags to clothing and/or Target bags, he may want to rethink his berating of others within earshot.

3) The Nursery: It’s a fart (armpit) of a room, previously painted French Impressionistic pink (one of the only colors of pink that offends even me, lover of all things pink) where Alex spent most of his babyhood hating, well, everything.

(Bedroom 4 is in the basement and would probably be best for a teenage lair, not for a child, especially not one who might get up overnight.)

Mimi has been sleeping in a pack-n-play (o! bless thee God of pack-n-plays) in the living room since she was born because she seems to hate the crib that we’d set up in the master bedroom. Oh, sure, she’ll NAP there, but when it comes to SLEEPING at night, oh, HELL no.

This weekend, we made the switch. The dreaded switch of sleeping quarters. The only one looking forward to this was Ben, who had been promised, in time, bunkbeds.

Alex moved in with Ben, and Amelia got her own room. I was terrified and Dave was so annoyingly optimistic that I sort of wanted to pee on him, which is the same way Dave and I go into pretty much everything. Blind optimism and The Voice of Reason. It’s not that I want things to go WRONG, it’s just that sometimes, I think that Dave should remember that they could.

Like this, for example:

Alex, who previously has slept like a champion in his fortress of a crib has now learned to crawl out of his crib. I’m not sure why it took moving in with his brother to take place but somehow that’s when it happened: yesterday at naptime, Alex took the opportunity to hoist his wee body from his crib to the room to lock the door. FROM THE INSIDE.

Can you hear my hair greying as I peck out those words?

We have a toddler bed, yes, and obviously I am somehow going to dismantle that lock today (chainsaw?)(icepick?)(playing Britney Spears music at it?).

Mimi is adjusting swimmingly to not sleeping among the chaos, and Ben, poor abused Ben, was kept up last night by his brother, who, overjoyed by having company, not realizing bedtime could be a team sport, wanted nothing more than to TALK to him. All night long. Poor, poor Ben.

In time, we’ll adjust, and in time mean time, I’ll pry my anxiety ridden fingers from my own neck where I am trying to strangle myself for having such a lovely idea and remember that this had to happen eventually.

Amelia couldn’t live in the living room forever. Right? RIGHT?

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So, loves, come gather round Your Aunt Becky and tell her a story. She’s not feeling too well today and could use some distractions. Advice, stories, gossip, just, anything.

Dear Aunt Becky,

I just had my performance review at work and the one criticism my boss gave me was that I need to work on my “ability to work with diverse types of co-workers who bring different skill sets, learning styles, learning paces, and work strategies,” (i.e. I have to learn how to better work with the morons we keep hiring). How do I do this with out smacking people?

Thanks!

boobarella

First off, let me say that I am sorry; that sucks. Sounds like many a Fearless Leader that I have had throughout my pathetically sorted working career.

Now this is how I would try and handle going in to work every day considering that quitting probably isn’t an option and if you’re like me, becoming an heiress is probably out of the question (although, I pray daily).

Remember this: The Big Boss looks for a certain pinhead type of person to be a middle manager. This type of person likes to swing around a bunch of words that don’t really make sense combined but sound efficient all strung together and are guaranteed to make the employee scratch their head, bewildered and angsty.

My suggestion, outside of a raging pill addiction, is to rent Office Space (or I can burn you a copy) and remember that while you’ll move to a different position and be happier being, well, you, this person will be stuck being Pinheaded Fearless Leader for the rest of their pathetic fucking life.

Dear Aunt Becky,

I’m 43 yrs old I just came back from my yearly 10,000 mile check up and I’m a little worried. Every year in the past it’s been pretty straight forward,feet planted, knees apart, deep breath, cold alien instrument inserted, scrape, and we’re done.

This time was a little different. My doctor had to try 3 different alien instruments, and she still couldn’t locate my cervix!! She assured me that it’s still there, but has referred me to a OBGYN just to make sure. Is this a common occurrence in women getting on in years? Is it possible that my cervix has dried up due to lack of use? Could it have fallen out when I wasn’t looking? Final question.. Do I even need a cervix if I’m not planning on birthing anything again?

Now, I am no expert in vaginas, I know, I own one myself and have been known to operate it, and maybe I’ve even confessed to The Internet that I might even be afraid of mine, so I can assure you that I’ve never seen my own cervix, but here’s my guess.

I think your cervix is probably hanging out with Jimmy Hoffa’s body, my old gym shorts (which may be in the dank crawl space at my parents house)(also: isn’t ‘dank’ a great word?), my virginity, (presumably) your virginity, 40,000 skin cells, that famous painting by that dead guy that’s gone missing and of course, the Mountain of Light Diamond.

All in all, I think your cervix is probably pretty happy where it is. Minus the gym shorts. Which should probably be burned.

Dear Aunt Becky,
When my obvious insanity doesn’t put guys off, I do get asked out sometimes. Usually by guys that I have no interest in and act like sad, lost puppies when they are around me. How would you recommend I reject them without completely breaking their soul?

Signed,
It’s Not Me, It’s Definitely You

Now, Gentle Reader of Mine, I should warn you that I was (and probably am still) exceedingly bad at matters of the heart and I am terrified at the thought of one of my children asking me for Love Advice. I may refer them to YOU, my wise blog readers. Pack mentality rules, and you guys always know more than I do.

But here is my snark free advice and you must not fail where Your Aunt Becky always did: you MUST be firm and kind without giving in to these poor guys. You are not doing them any favors by stringing them along and agreeing to a movie or dinner.

Your Aunt Becky could have learned much from her own advice here. Please, firm and clear: “I am not going to go to dinner with you. Thank you for your offer. Good-bye.”

Please, let Your Aunt Becky know how it goes.

Be strong, my sister. STRONG.

Why do Chinese restaurants give you rice with every single entree that you order? On Sunday, I ordered Sesame chicken (1 entree) and Vegetable Fried Rice (the second entree) from a Chinsese take out place. (In the interest of complete disclosure, I got a small Won Ton soup as well).

When I got home, I found out that they had also given me two(2) orders of white steamed rice! So, essentially they gave me white rice with my fried rice. I threw them both out.

Why would anyone want white rice with their fried rice?

I am pretty sure that your Chinese restaurant either believes that my children live with you, because they both seem to subsist on a White Stuff Only diet (don’t ask, don’t tell) or that they are running an undercover front for an awesomely illegal organization and they don’t want to alert you so they bribe you with food.

I think that’s a pretty sweet deal. You can ship your white rice to me. You can mail rice, right? Certainly nothing could go wrong with mailing perishable food, right?

“They look like white elephants,” she said.

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

“No you wouldn’t have.”

Ernest Hemingway, “Hills Like White Elephants”

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In the Lifetime Movie of The Aunt Becky Story which would probably be called something like Stairway to DANGER or A Girl and Her Sausages I would take this post and explain that the reason that I take the opportunity to shed light on pregnancy and infant loss is because I myself lost a baby. Or I’m missing a brother. Or a sister. Or a cousin. Or a uncle. Or something.

But my life isn’t a Lifetime Movie, and even if it were, I wouldn’t be cast as Janeane Garofalo anyway because my hooters are too big, and really, I haven’t lost a baby. No one particularly close to me has.

I’ve known a lot of people through the years that have: neighbors, friends of my parents. One of my first funerals was for a baby and I was probably 8 or 9 and the coffin was so tiny and I remember feeling such sorrow.

Sure, astute readers will note that I had a couple of miscarriages, but they were so early that I don’t need sympathy and now that the time has marched on, I barely acknowledge them at all. I certainly didn’t mourn them when I lit my candle last night.

But when I started blogging, I fell in with the baby loss mommas and I’ve always stayed in touch with them. Maybe I feel a kindred spirit with them, not for the loss of their son or daughter but because I know how it feels to be on The Other Side looking in, I don’t know.

What I do know is this, I know how it feels to sit in a room with a gigantic white elephant sitting in the corner taking up most of the room, trampling your prized orchids and taking a shit on your favorite Swarovski figurines while people blatantly ignored it. It could hoot and holler and clang-clang-clang and people would STILL sit there and pretend that every-fucking-thing was okay.

Most people don’t know how to handle grief and they don’t know that it’s okay to not have a solution to offer. Dave’s like this and it’s one of the rare things we fight about because he cannot seem to comprehend that there are things out there that aren’t, well, solvable. AND THAT IS OKAY.

Sometimes the best thing that you can do for someone who is hurting is to say, “I’m sorry.” Because you ARE sorry.

Treating people who have lost a child or who struggle to conceive or people who have cancer or people who are hurting as though they are contagious and are better to be avoided lest you “bring up bad memories” or to “let things die down” well, that’s cowardly.

Sure, it’s easier to imagine that you’re doing your friend a favor by not calling or emailing or sending a card and pretty much leaving them hanging in the breeze because emotions are hard and they’re ugly and shit, no one wants to see the raw grief that comes with such things.

Trust me. The only favor you’re doing is for yourself.

If you want to be a friend, call. Keep calling. Send an email every time it pops in your head to do so. Talk about light stuff. Let them know you care and that you’re around when they’re ready. Be their friend.

Some day, you’re going to be one of The Others too, because that is life.

Thank you to anyone who left a kind comment or lit a candle to remember all of the lost babies and children. I know it means a lot to everyone involved. I was moved to tears each time I added another name. The list gets longer every time I do this and it breaks me up.

I’ll be back with my regularly scheduled snark soon, so don’t worry, this hasn’t turned into a blog about sad stuff or water safety or how to cross the street or how to start dating after divorce (all things I’ve been emailed by people to talk to you about)(I know)(what.the.fuck?)

Until then, I leave you with this:

How the hell did she manage to bust out of her cage? AGAIN?

According to the Center’s For The Disease Control’s Website (and hopefully *crosses fingers strongly* my future employer), about 1 in every 100-200 births in the United States results in a stillbirth. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 4 million stillbirths occur yearly worldwide. The numbers for neonatal and postnatal deaths run into the tens of thousands.

Those numbers seem large to me, but even after having to take a statistics class to get through nursing school I can’t say that I’m much of a numbers person. The Daver, he likes numbers, which is why he’s off saving the world, one string of code at a time, while Your Aunt Becky sits here, mouth breathing and occasionally wondering aloud, “Is the INTERNET working?”

Numbers aren’t my thing. People are my thing. 1 in 100-200 sounds like a hell of a lot bigger number when you attach faces to those numbers. Faces, stories and names. People. My friends. My nieces, my nephews, their parents. Tables forever missing one. Lives cut short. Unlived.

Still born. Born still.

My friends. Their children.

Hannah

Paige

Caleb

Baby JP

Brenna

Kalila

William

Isabel Grace

Maddy

William Henry

Aodin

Callum

Sarah

Connor

Liam

Samuel

Caden

Masyn

Olive Lucy

Seth Milton

Abigail Hlee

JoeJoe Sherman

Baby Nick

Gabriel Anton

Ryan

Jonathan

Devin Alin

Jacob and Joshua

Baby K, Gabriel Connor, Christian Elliot and Andrew

Emmerson

Baby Kuyper

Mara S.

Nathan Michael

Eva

Timothy, Taea, and Thomas

Kyle S.

John Addison

Raime, Elora & Connor

Ava and Nathaniel

Rose

Micaela, Angelica, and Frankie

Donald Angus

Baby Cline

Addison Hope

Ryne Moyer

Marcus Reeves

Julian Ulysses

Becky

Caleb

Sean Isaac

Jessica Anne

Paul James

Ashlynn Brooks

David Lee

Babies Boone

Olcott-Lueke angels

Baby A and Baby B twin girls

Baby Girl B and Baby Boy A

Becca’s Twin Siblings

Jackson

Kaitlyn Grace

Brennan

Ellery

Robert Daniel

Quinn

Josie Ree Smith

Isabel

Issac

Samuel and Amelia

Draven Fredrick

I’ll add names to this list so if you’d like me to add a name, please don’t hesitate to email me becky (at) dwink (dot) net or leave me a comment.

At 7 pm tonight, October 15th, A Day To Remember, I will burn a candle in memorium and I encourage you to do the same.

Dona nobis pacem.

(give us peace) Lord, give us peace.

Whether I’m shoveling buckets of food in or cradling the porcelain bowl like it was the lone port in a storm I tend to gain a lot of weight when I’m pregnant. As I like to brag, I tend to gain MORE weight when I can’t eat, which would make me an excellent famine survivor, should zombies and the undead rise from their graves.

It’s all about how you spin it, right?

Because the last time I had the stomach flu, I also ended up gaining weight. You’d think I was lying, except for why the hell would I tell you about carrying my poo around in a bucket and then lie about gaining weight? In terms of orders of magnitude, that simply doesn’t make sense.

If I was gonna lie, I’d tell you that I just won the Nobel Peace Prize for Awesomeness.

Because, OBVIOUSLY.

So, anyway, a couple of months ago, I confessed to you, Fair Reader, that I needed to shed some 60 pounds of baby weight still stubbornly clinging to my ass. Lord knows that my ass must get jealous of all the attention my stomach gets and feels it necessary to get pregnant too.

I bought Alli.

You know, the drug they advise you not to wear white pants while you take it? The one where they suggest that “treatment effects” might cause you “discomfort” and/or “anal leakage?” It seemed a better course of action than a tapeworm, so I dutifully took pill after ever-loving blue pill.

Until my hair started falling out.

Whoops!

“Bald” and “fat,” not two words I needed to hear in conjunction with Aunt Becky, so quickly to the computer I dashed, and there it was, bold as day: patients with thyroid disease should consult their doctor before starting this medication.

Well, fuck me sideways with a chainsaw. I have mother-humping thyroid disease. Nice going, dipwad. Way to READ those warnings, ass-bag, nimrod, moron, fucking brainiac.

Truthfully, the Alli, besides making for some interesting bathroom ass-plosions, wasn’t working anyway. I dutifully ate better and I’d managed to gain a pound. I guess there really IS no quick cure for weight loss, eh?

Anyway, turns out, my thyroid crapped out on me once again in a condition called postpartum thyroiditis. It happened after I had Alex and and it’s happening again now, so catching it and increasing my meds to the TOP OF THE DRUG MANUFACTURERS DOSE (doesn’t that make me sound AWESOME?) should help with Operation Lose My Fat Ass.

Also helping is the Topamax, which has jump started the whole process by making food taste like rancid cheese.

Today marks Day 1 back on Weight Watchers–a diet, which, I should add, is awesome–and while I don’t expect it to work miracles, knowing that the scale already is moving in the proper direction makes me feel like a real human again.

I don’t think I can explain how frustrating it is to do all of the right things and still feel trapped by a body that won’t cooperate. Wait, actually I bet a number of you CAN understand that, just probably for different reasons.

Also, I hate to brag, but I’m pretty sure I lost at least 21 pounds ordering The Shred off Amazon, but I wouldn’t actually know because I tossed out my scale several months ago because it was broken. Well, it was broken or my 8 year old weighs 23 pounds in which case, I probably should get his malnourished ass to the hospital soon for Nutritious Things.

So, today, I order a new, unbroken scale and I’m back to tracking points and anxiously awaiting dreading my Shred DVD so that I can get my out-of-shape ass kicked by that horrifying bitch, because It’s Time. No more excuses, no more apologies, just accountability.

God, I wish a tapeworm would work.

(Maybe we should form a support group or something.)(hold me)(HOLD ME)

Today over at Toy With Me, I’m talking about sex after baby. It’s surprisingly neither dirty nor particularly funny. It’s probably more honest and true than you’re used to, but I think that it’s something that warrants a frank discussion.

And, if you have an idea for a future topic for a column over there, please, drop me an email to aunt.becky.sucks@gmail.com or leave me a comment here or there.

Click the smiling beaver to be whisked away:

Or stick around and read a blast from the past:

(oh, and if you want to vote for me in either of the contests I’m up for, I’d be most tickled in a delicious way. They’re in my side bar and require registration. Grr.)

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Back in my senior year in college, I was broke as a joke, but since I had a three year old, it meant a lot more than I couldn’t buy Ramen or another 30-case of Pabst Blue Ribbon, it meant that I could barely afford Christmas gifts for him.

I should have known better than to accept a second hand hamster, but there I was, nodding my head stupidly “YES” to my classmate when she offered me her rejected hamster, citing that she didn’t have time to play with him anymore.

How could I pass this up?

I’d owned various hamsters and assorted small rodents when I was a child, only to watch them meet their untimely demise at the jaws of my cats.It’s a fucking wonder I’m not more twisted than I am.

Where’s Sid? AAAAH! There he is! DEAD! NO! And NOT NANCY TOOOO! NOOOO!!

Sometimes, the hamsters would even eat their babies before I could stop them, only adding to the macabre situation of Rodent Gloom and Doom in my house.

Anyway, I’d remembered loving them before, well, they died and figured that Ben would too. He’d play with them, help clean their cages, and feed them little bits of his dinner just like I used to do!

Problem was, though, that Ben couldn’t have given less of a shit about the hamster, who he’d named Joey. This wasn’t one of my brighter ideas, considering Ben preferred planets to people, but we managed.

Joey lived a peaceful hamster life until one day he chewed free from the plastic house he lived in. I assumed that he would get lost in my parents house, possibly finding all of the skeletons of his contemporaries and didn’t give it much thought beyond feeling sort of sad for a moment.

I’d been down this road before, I knew that looking for him was useless, I mean it wasn’t like I could call him by name and he’d come running for me. And since he was approximately the size of a cotton ball, he could literally be anywhere.

One day a couple of weeks later, I was hastily plugging out a blog post on my father’s laptop when I heard some squeaking. Assuming the radio was tuned to some weird NPR program about ancient Siberian squeaking, I continued blogging. Eventually my bladder tapped me on the shoulder and I got up and headed for the bathroom.

It was there where I saw my two kittens, Finnegan and Atticus playing with something in the corner. Upon further inspection, I realized that it was a puff-ball that looked remarkably like…Joey.

Shit! I thought as I grabbed his little body up. Fuck! They got the hamster!

Now, just because I didn’t go on a Hamster Finding Mission didn’t mean I wanted him to die like that, so I carefully put him back in his cage on a heating pad offering a prayer up to the heavens that I hadn’t just killed another hamster.

I hadn’t.

What I had done is turned this sweet puff-ball of a hamster into a raging asshole. Walk by his cage and he would throw himself at the bars, punching at you. If you stood near his cage for too long, he’d start to fling his poo at you.

Oh yes, the new Joey flung poo.

He’d also bite the shit out of your fingers if you were stupid enough to try and touch him, leaving large puncture wounds where your skin had been mere seconds before. He liked the taste of blood.

Joey the Adorable Puff Ball had turned into Joey the Mean Hamster.

His brain had been re-hardwired to hate.

I dutifully changed his litter, gave him food and water, and frantically googled “dwarf hamster life span.” The relief I felt was palpable when I learned that he was nearing death. But no. Not Joey.

Joey not only got outlived the top end of his expected lifespan, but he doubled it. He graduated college with me, got married with me, followed me through 3 different moves, and he even managed to somehow place a voodoo hex on the two cats that mauled him. Because those kittens? Died before he did.

Joey The Mean Hamster lasted until right after Alex was born, torturing guests at my baby shower by pelting food and poo at anyone who stopped to say “What a cute hamster!” His fur became sort of grayish white, his nails approached Howard Hughes lengh, and he got pretty dilapidated looking.

But he was alive and you weren’t going to forget it for a second.

He died one night shortly after, and you know what? For all of the pounds of my flesh he ate and liked, I was kinda sad. It was like losing your own personal Archenemy. Maybe I wasn’t his friend, but it was really hilarious to have someone hate me so much.

Something that hated me that I had to take care of.

*sighs*

Rest In Peace, Joey The Mean Hamster. Gone, but never forgotten.

No matter how hard I try.

In high school, I dated a guy who had so much money that his father actually had gold bricks lying around the house. I always debated stealing one, but I’m not a thief and I never really knew what I’d do with one if I took it. I mean, I’m pretty sure those puppies are kind of well-tracked. It wasn’t like I could have taken that to the record store and bought Britney’s new CD without raising eyebrows.

Plus, I’m honest enough, and my conscience is guilty enough that the next time I saw his dad, and he’d said, “Hi Becks!” I would have responded innocently with, “OHMYGOD I’M SO SORRY I STOLE THE BRICK PLEASE DON’T HATE ME.”

Yeah. Not exactly coy, eh?

But in that neighborhood for 2 years of my life I learned a lot. Namely the term “trophy wife.”

As someone who, at age 18, had realized cleverly that she was allergic to a hard day of work, this seemed like an idea life to me. I’d marry an old rich guy, pop out some kids, occasionally sleep with him when Viagra could give him a boner, and live a life of leisure. I’d pop pills, have plastic surgery, hang out at the Country Club down the street. I’d lunch and spa and hand the kids off to the nannies to be raised.

Eventually, my husband would die, his First Wife would fight me in court for his estate, and eventually we’d settle. The only real kink in my Ultimate Plan so far as I could see was that I wasn’t blond, but that, I figured, could be remedied with a quick dye job.

A Trophy Wife, I liked the sound of that.

Age 22 found me unmarried with a kid, working my way through the prerequisites required to get into nursing school, and although I was pretty pleased with school, I was becoming increasingly aware that nursing school wasn’t going to be what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

Age 22 also found me to be The Date for any of my male friends going to any company parties, because, well, they knew I put out everyone needs a standby date. Evan had been one of my best friends since I could remember and when he invited me to be his date for one of his work dinners, I accepted immediately.

We showed up together at a swanky steakhouse, and in the vein of broke 20 year old’s everywhere, I began drinking immediately. Because OBVIOUSLY. So by the time dinner began, I was fairly lit and began drunkenly talking to the guy on my left, an attractive guy with an accent, probably 20 years my senior.

Evan, always one to ditch me at parties, had probably already ditched me by this point anyway, so I made this guy my date. Besides, Evan and I were just friends, and this guy was charming and funny, and, well, Evan was the same guy who had come over to my house and left a framed picture of his naked ass on my pillow a couple of years before.

A real charmer, that one.

It probably wasn’t until the end of the evening by which point I was fairly loaded when the guy who was sitting next to me stood up and started addressing the room when I realized that the person that I’d been teasing and generally making an ass of myself in front of wasn’t The Boss. He wasn’t the Bosses Boss. Oh no.

He was the Big, Big, Big, Big BIG Boss.

And somehow? He found me ADORABLE.

Because I had no idea who he was, I wasn’t shoving my tongue up his ass trying to get a promotion or a raise or a car or whatever it is that people do around the Big Boss People and I think he found that refreshing. Maybe I was just an awesome drunk or just On My Game that night, I don’t know. All that I do know is that the second I was out of there, he was all over Evan to hook him up with me.

The problem is, I really wasn’t interested in dating him. The prospect of living a life of leisure, even though he was funny and attractive AND had a sexy accent AND a assload of money just didn’t do it for me. I tried to reframe my thinking for an entire week and I simply couldn’t do it.

Turns out that life as a Lady of Leisure, even with the prospect of free pills and unlimited plastic surgery just wasn’t enough for me.

I know. I KNOW.

I still don’t know what I was thinking.

Dear Aunt Becky,
My mother in law feels the need to fill my child full of crackers just before ingesting a nutritional balanced dinner. Of course said child refused to eat said dinner because he is full of said crackers. Is it ok to skull drag her dumbass and punt her head across the yard for such a deed?

I would say that this is only an acceptable answer if you can somehow manage to capture the entire thing on video so that you can then upload it onto the Internet so that I can watch it over and over when I’m having a bad day. Because that mental image is DELICIOUS.

*sighs*

I had the same Epic Battle Royale over juice. My mother seemed sure that juice was the sweet, sweet nectar of the gods, which made my son decide that food was then not worth eating. Ever. Obviously, you know the rub.

If talking to gently doesn’t work (“you know that he DOES need to eat dinner, and crackers aren’t dinner…”), and if talking to your kid doesn’t work (“crackers aren’t ACTUALLY dinner…”), I’d say punting is the only option left.

And then Youtube, there you go.

If you do NOT put this on Youtube, I will hunt you down.

Hi Aunt Becky!

After reading about your struggles with sleep, and those damn siberian farting squirrels (it’s a real phenomenon, people!), I was wondering if you have any advice on approaching the topic with a doctor.

I’ve attempted to drop hints at appointments in the past, but the doctor tends to head toward the “Are you depressed? Maybe some SSRIs would help you sleep…” Path. Nope, not depressed. Slightly stabby from lack of sleep, but not depressed. I’m just an extremely light sleeper and have trouble falling asleep if there is any audible noise. Earplugs don’t help, and otc stuff like benadryl doesn’t cut it.

Thanks in advance!

‘Literally Sleepless in PA

Those fucking squirrels are everywhere. Assholes.

Man, that’s a tough conversation to have with your doctor, especially if you have one that seems convinced that you’re depressed. Which, if you’re not sleeping, dude, you know you’re just NOT SLEEPING. It’s gonna make you loopy, not depressed.

My advice is this: try to be firm and clear. Go in to the doctor SPECIFICALLY to talk about this. Arm yourself with a notepad where you’ve written yourself a simple script. I tend to get all stupid around doctors after years of having them not listen to me, so having something I can keep repeating helps me out.

If he/she doesn’t listen. Go to someone else. You’re not alone.

(Unisom works best for me, by the by)

You have my FULL BLESSING to punch the next person to suggest warm milk to you. Good luck. Let me know how it goes.

Aunt Becky, can you talk a bit about trolling? What’s your policy on responding/ ignoring/ deleting comments?

Why of course I can, Gentle Reader, because as you know, Your Aunt Becky can talk at great length about nothing at all because I am a blogger and this is what we do.

Truthfully, though, I have no such policy in place in regards to trolls.

But let’s back up for a second, shall we? An Internet Troll, for those of you not in the know, has many definitions, ranging from:

• Someone who expresses dissenting opinions “I don’t agree with what you say.”
• Someone who comes to a blog trying to cause deliberate harm, “You’re a fucking assbag and you should be put out of your misery”
• Someone who tries to pick a fight with you or your readers for the sake of being controversial, “God, you’re all a bunch of sheep” or “I hate women because they are the weaker sex.”
• Someone who is stating misinformation, “Aunt Becky can divide by zero.”

In the years that I have blogged, I will be honest with you, I can count on (barely) my two hands the trollish comments that I have gotten, which I know, wipe that look of shock off your face, I know. I’m surprised too. Really, I am.

Maybe I shouldn’t be, though. I don’t tend to court controversy, though, and I keep my nose away from most of the mommy wars because I don’t find them worth my time or effort. Besides, 50 million Ethiopian pygmies don’t give a flying shit, why should I bother getting involved?

I’d much rather pluck my leg hairs out one by ever-loving one than express my deep and meaningful opinions on the latest thing we’re polarizing about THIS week, because OBVIOUSLY.

I’ve deleted one nasty comment once, and that was the day that I got booted from my lovely three day stint in the hospital broom closet for suspected pre-eclampsia and some ass-bag calling me out for being boring just didn’t need to be published that day.

Most people, though, I’ve learned, are perfectly lovely. I treat most of the people that I have met through my blog as they are my friends and I do my best to keep up with everyone. Of the 8 or so trollish comments that I’ve had, probably 5 of them have apologized to me later on, which I’d say is a pretty decent track record.

Part of it too, though, is burying my head in the sand. I no longer have a stats program that records any incoming links and I do not have a google alert on my blog name, so if people are talking smack about me, I am not privy to it.

I think I like it better that way.

So until I see otherwise, I don’t plan on having any sort of policy on trolls. Unless they’re fucking with my people. In which case I will smack a bitch DOWN.

Gentle Internet, what is/would your policy on trolls be?

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And, as always, lovies, if I’ve left anything out, please, add in what you will. Also, please don’t be afraid by the huge jump in the number of comments you see after my posts. They’re due to the threaded comments which add a comment every time *I* add a comment, which make me look impossibly cooler than I am.

Even with the cancellation of Christmas, I’ve always been sort of a childish freak about the holidays. I’m the person you see jumping up and down and clapping like a goddamed monkey as they put up the displays of holiday wares in August.

I cannot wait for the stores to start playing Christmas music and as far as I’m concerned, they can skip back-to-school stuff entirely and stock Christmas and Halloween stuff year round. I’d keep the house decorated all year long if it didn’t piss off my neighbors and make me look like more of a freak than my electric yellow house already makes me.

(deep breath. You DON’T buy a house for the color of the siding. Yellow is cheerful. It is unique. It is ass ugly. It is cheerful. It blinds me on a sunny day. It is unique. I loathe love the color of my house.)

And I’ll admit, part of the allure of squeezing an 8 pound bowling ball from my cootch was the hope that one day, I could live out all of my holiday fantasies through my child.

But my first child, well, he does love the holidays…sort of. I mean, Ben has a lust for life that even Iggy Pop couldn’t rival. He loves the holidays, he loves Tuesdays, and he loves, well, everything except for bedtimes (which have convinced him that I am a communist dictator from HELL) and scooping cat poo from the litter boxes.

At age 8, his love of the holidays is only now being cultivated. At age 2, he was the oddest person I’d had the pleasure of knowing.

Conversely, at age 2, his younger brother has such a feverish love of the holidays that I wonder if I simply grew him on my body like a pod and shed him like a second skin. Were it not for his nearly translucent skin, which is eerily like his father’s, he would be my clone in every single way.

Daily, he begs to go to the greenhouse so that he may look at the pumpkins and the huge decorative gazing balls there (please, o! please make the jokes that I cannot make because they would be o! so inappropriate) and the trickies (fountains) and flowers.

Carefully, he selects the smallest pie pumpkin and brings it over to where the Christmas balls hang off of a fake Christmas tree and he carefully shows each of the balls his treasure: a pumpkin.

Neatly, sweetly he has personified both the pumpkin and the ball as beings rather than inanimate objects, in the same way he has to bid goodnight to “Venus” and “Mars-Gots-Moons” and my personal favorite “Purple Ball.”

“Blankie” is so much more to him than a piss-stained, ugly white blanket. It’s his best friend and playmate, his lovey, and his bedmate, one that I have to wrastle away from him many times each week for a bath in bleach, always amid tears and heartache. On his end, not mine.

It shocks me that this rough and tumble creature, this all-testosterone fueled boy could be so soft and gentle too. These days, this is one of the things–along with this blog–that keep me going.

I realize that I’ve been living in a fog: between the Topamax and the headaches, my wonky thyroid, the insomnia and the postpartum depression, I haven’t been myself lately. I put one foot carefully in front of the other, never faltering, because I have too much depending on my anymore to really falter without my house falling apart around me.

But seeing my son, a pint sized see-through version of me, all of the best parts of who I am coming to light, exuberant and alive, relishing the small things: the string of pumpkin lights I have hanging over my mantle that he dances in front of every morning.

His body wriggling with unabashed joy, barely containing his glee at what a genuinely wonderful world we live in, moving to music that only he can hear and I smile, the tears close. Tears of pride, of happiness and of joy.

And I know that I will be okay. Soon, the music that I’ve always danced to will start back up, because if I listen closely craning my ears, I can start to make out the sounds, way in the background, underneath all of the noise and dirt.

I am hopeful. I have hope.

The toddler, he trips over his own feet, looks around, bewildered by gravity and then gets back up, taking off running again after looking around warily to see if that wily gravity is going to punch him again, he knows that this is the way things are.

We all fall down. We all get back up again.