What do you do if you have an annoying friend who lacks all originality and copies the shit you do while all the while trying to pretend she’s totally authentic? Buys the same stuff (clothes, accessories), tries to dress her kid like yours, and let’s not start on the blog…

*sighs*

So first off, let me say that I’m sorry and that it’s annoying and that while people will tell you to be flattered, I’ve never once been flattered. Mostly I’ve wanted to make sure that my brain matter didn’t pop out through my eyeballs because I was so mad. I loathe being copied nearly as much as I loathe pretentious American people who add a “u” in words like “favourite”.

(you get a pass if you’re European, Canadian or were raised that way. Because, obviously.)

Just like, I’m sure, you do.

It’s the highest form of flattery, MY ASS. Maybe when you’re 8 or something, but not when you’re an adult. But it happens.

Here’s the rub though, my love. You can’t go swinging around, accusing people of ripping off your ideas, your catch phrases, your awful awesome sense of style without looking like a complete jackass.

There’s just no polite way to say “STOP COPYING ME” without sounding like you’re either so full of yourself that you need an extra chair for your ego or like you’re 12 and decorating your Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper with heart stickers.

If it bothers you as much as it bothers me, I’d delete, delete, delete and get as far away as you can. Or I’d ignore her blatant rip-off and hope like hell that people see that she’s obviously the copy-cat.

Frankly, I don’t think I could be the bigger person here because I am highly immature like that.

You must let me know how you handle it, love.

So, my son has this doctor that people from all over the world come to see for a very specific problem. He has a great team of researchers, nurses, nurse practitioners, and office personnel. He, on the other hand, while as brilliant and smart as anyone I’ve ever met, has the bedside manner of Dr House, perhaps worse. We have to keep him. He’s hard to get, and knows what he’s doing. But for the love of all things good, how on earth can I handle this man’s attitude?

Ah, Dr. Asshole. My favorite.

Obviously, you can’t break up with him and that sucks. Any way that you can sneak in a Xanax for yourself to take before you have to see him? I know Mimi’s neurosurgeon was brilliant but was abrupt and made me want to kill myself, so I always went in medicated. I was also in crisis mode, so I didn’t feel a thing anyway and sat there hysterical anyway.

If that isn’t an answer, I’d arm yourself with a notepad and pen and write down whatever questions that you have to ask him and try to focus on the notepad in front of you. That’s how they teach smokers to get through a craving, to focus on one small thing in front of them, and it works.

I’d try and distance myself PERSONALLY from his attitude as much as I could–because I assure you that he’s not being kept up at night wondering how to deal with YOU–and remind myself through clenched teeth that he was a cocky motherfucker, but that he was a cocky motherfucker who got the job DONE.

What should you do if you keep thinking of your ex – in a good way? Not a terrible break up, divorced because of needing to be in different places at once. It’s been 10 years, and haven’t spoken to him again. He still lives where he originally moved to, and I still live where I wouldn’t move from. (and never the twain shall meet)

I just think about him more than normal I guess. Wonder what things would have been like. How dangerous is this thinking? And, do you think he is thinking of me? :o)

Oh Gentle Reader, Your Aunt Becky SUCKS in matters of the heart, but for your heart, I will make a stab at answering this very honest question to the best of my ability. I’m sure my much more qualified readers will be able to help wherever I leave you hanging.

I think that some people leave a mark on us that’s ingrained into our psyche deeper than we can ever erase, no matter how much time or distance we can put between us. I don’t mean that we all have some unrequited love out there, just waiting to have some crazy Hollywood ending, but just that some people leave a bigger impression on us–for some reason–than others.

In times of weakness, or happiness, or sorrow, or any sort of strong changing emotions, we draw back to those people, consciously or no and think about them and the what-might-have-been’s. Sometimes, these are just nice daydreams and fantasies and other times they can send you to places you probably shouldn’t go.

It’s up to you to figure out which this is.

I’m sure your ex husband thinks of you, probably fondly sometimes, maybe not so much others (your split certainly sounded amicable, which deserves a round of applause from me)(*applauds you*) but you need to remember that you got divorced for a reason.

Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton twice and divorced him, well, twice.

Perhaps you’re just thinking fondly back to that time in your life and remember how wonderful things were back then.

If I were you, I’d take a step back and try and figure out where these emotions are coming from. I wish you the best of luck, my friend. I’m sure my readers will have excellent advice for you wherever I screwed up.

So, readers, HALP ME.

And, as always, click the Ask Aunt Becky link on my sidebar to submit a question for my crappy noteworthy amazing should be banned from the internet advice column.

I made a big fuss a couple of months ago after I started getting lumped in with the Mothers Who Drink about how I am not an alcoholic. It’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever written so if you haven’t read it, you should.

Anyway, it wasn’t a joke. I’m not an alcoholic.

I’ve always been fearful of becoming a pill-popper, though, so when I got a standing prescription for Vicodin for my anniversary (from a real doctor! Not, like The Internet!) for my my grains I was a little afraid I’d pass out in a pool of my own drool after having a little too much medicated fun.

I haven’t.

Turns out, I’m not a pill-popper either.

I’m not a smoker, I don’t drink coffee, I don’t hoard cats, kids, dogs or Precious Moments figurines (shudder, shudder).

But I am an addict. I know that now.

(don’t worry, I’m not rehashing a boring plot of a show because that’s nearly as dull as a dream sequence and I don’t do that either. Bear with me now.)

I watched an episode of House, MD where the lead character looks frantically for something to replace his Vicodin habit with and he ultimately decides on cooking. He spends all day and night making spaghetti sauce, eschewing sleep to make the sauce until he perfects it.

I watched that scene, my mouth agape (likely a thin filament of drool hanging merrily down) tears coursing down my cheeks with my hands around my Orchid’s for Dummies book, after I put down my iPhone where I’d been looking up the precise humidity level my particular species of orchid likes and spec-ing out the dimensions for a light box so that during the semi-dark Midwestern winters, my flowers get the exact precise amount of light they’ll need.

I slowly swiveled my head, my eyes as wide as saucers to The Daver who looked back at me and I said crying, choking a little, “Oh my God, I didn’t know, why didn’t you tell me?”

He looked back at me, slightly bemused and said, “Baby, I thought you knew.”

No, no I didn’t know.

In hindsight, though, it all makes sense.

I get asked a lot, sometimes kindly, sometimes in awe, sometimes in a oh-my-god-you’re-an-asshole sort of way, how I can write in my blog most days of the week and well, now you have your answer, my friends: that’s how. I’m an addict. I’m compulsive.

And I’ve channeled any of the energy I might have put into less wholesome activities and put it somewhere wholesome. Creating instead of destroying.

It gives me a sense of accomplishment to come here and peck out an entry for you that writing an essay for myself wouldn’t give me. You give me feedback that the blank Open Office document won’t and I can interact with you and it’s a hell of a lot more satisfying than washing the floor.

Maybe I need to get addicted to housework. I’d get laid more.

It was pretty clear from the moment I trudged back to the train from my first day as Student Nurse Aunt Becky weeping like a crazed fool that I wasn’t going to make a very good nurse. I knew it when I signed up for the program that this probably wasn’t going to be a career I could actually stick with, because I don’t do well taking orders from people, no matter how adorable Precious Moments scrubs are.

They’re not, by the by. Precious Moments anything make me want to heave.

But anyway.

I was as welcome among the ranks of Student Nurse as a bout of gonorrhea and that was made clear right away. I don’t know why, except that I’m probably a gigantic puckered poohole, but the rest of the class (mostly) hated me. Never one to let people get the best of me, I hated them right back.

Especially since they’d interrupt our four hour lectures, hands waving feverishly in the air only to have something like this come out:

Umm…so I work in a hospital right now as a tech, right? And yeah, on your Slide Show, you show the pads that we put under the patient as blue? But where I work, they’re pink?”

Blink, Blink, Blink.

For the first couple of weeks, I’d wait patiently to hear the statement/question followed up with something more important, something that would make an outburst like that really worth interrupting class for. Nothing ever came. Just observations.

Not witty observations like, “Why does my cat insist upon licking his empty nutsack for 5 hours?” or even ephiphones like “Arbys = RB’s = Roast Beef’s!!!!” No. Just bullshit like, “One time, my grandma was in the hospital and her roommate had a Code Brown.”

Blink, blink, motherfucking BLINK.

Torture. Pure torture.

At the end of my senior year, we rotated through the ER and finally, I felt like I had found my calling. No more shoving suppositories and wiping butts for me. No more bathing old people or young people or hiding from overbearing Nurse Ratched.

It was all holding organs in body cavities and blood and guts and sputum and hearts falling onto the floor and suicides and it was like mother-fucking heaven. IV-drips, patients who have to go elsewhere and doctors who stay put and nurses who love their job and techs who, wow.

I’m not sure why I didn’t end up working in the ER.

It’s hard to get in there, for one thing, and I probably would have had to work for a couple of years on a Med/Surgical floor (which may as well be called an Ass/Butts floor in my book) which probably would have made me insane before I could have applied to the ER.

I really don’t know why I didn’t go for it. I should have.

I drifted to a Cardio unit–the same place I always said I never wanted to work–at the intense urging of a over-eager HR manager and lasted there only a couple of weeks, because, well, I know myself.

From there I went into hospice case management (they didn’t call Your Aunt Becky “Nurse Death” for no reason) and then I’ve stayed home with my kids after I had Alex. I plan on doing a stint with Doctors Without Borders when my kids stop needing their momma so damn much, but that probably won’t be for a couple more years.

Dave works pretty much at the same rate he consumes oxygen and while I could go back to work, at this point, it would create more problems than it would solve.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately, my three remaining brain cells rattling about my brain cavity like ball bearings about how much I miss that part of my old life.

It’s great to use my medical knowledge to be smugly superior and occasionally solve the medical mysteries on House, MD before his team does, but I miss using the rational and analytical part of my brain. That’s what I do best: analyze.

I’m going back to school soon, I’ll get my PhD in virology like I always said I would and I’ll get to pursue my dreams, a little derailed thanks to a couple of crotch parasites, but intact and burbling just below the surface

I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to nursing and it’s likely that the next time I’m in the ER will be with one of the kids and most days it probably won’t make me nostalgic, or maybe it will. I can’t be sure.

Are we all so conflicted?

I’m not much of a tech person.

I mean, I appreciate that it’s there, and I still am impressed every single time I turn on my iPhone that it’s just so fancy pants (also: I am impressed that I haven’t bedazzled the shit out of it yet. But have no fear, I will. Better yet, I will find someone on Etsy to do it for me) and I can work my blog mostly.

I’m the person who didn’t get an email address until my friend in college set me up with one (which is why it was sex_kitten23) and an AIM account until I started dating someone who suggested I get one (stinkybutt234) and I doubt I’d have a blog, twitter or Facebook page were it not for The Daver and his ever-expanding attraction to social media sites.

While I may not be into tech stuff, The Daver obviously is. So is my father.

My addict-like nature did come from somewhere and for him, he’s always been really interested in computers and as far back as I can remember, he’s subscribed to Porn For Geeks computer magazines by the truckload. Hey, you knew the orchid thing didn’t come from nowhere, right?

If nothing else, these magazines have made my father p-a-r-a-n-o-i-d about the security of his network. Because, yeah, the man has at least 3 computers hooked up there protected by a state of the art firewall set up by my engineer of a brother. His network is the Fort Knox of networks.

Which is interesting, because no one–not even my brother or Dave–can get onto it. I guess my brother is pretty good at his job.

What makes the situation even weirder is that my father doesn’t really house anything too important on his computers. He doesn’t work for the CIA or FBI or any of those cool acronym agencies. He doesn’t write novels or tomes of poetry. He doesn’t take gigabytes of pictures, painstakingly, lovingly retouching them.

No.

He plays games. Reads blogs. Surfs the web. Occasionally reads my Facebook status, ashamed that he has a daughter who pollutes the Internet with her drivel. Wonders how to disown her.*

Reads up on spyware and how it means that the terrorists are WINNING and how reformatting your hard drive is a great way to solve all of the world’s ill’s. Reformats his hard drive. Figures he’ll call Dave to help him fix it.

Needless to say, waving the one piece of swag I kept from BlogHer–a Flash Drive–near the computer didn’t work. I had no idea what the password was and my mother was just as clueless and Dave just rolled his eyes. My father has locked us all effectively out.

Don’t worry, though, I haven’t forgotten about the picture I owe you for voting for me (you can still vote for me! HOORAY!), neatly locked away from me on my father’s computer, inaccessible and sad.

It will be taken care of, though, my friends. Soon *cackles wildly* o! soon you will see the Halloween costume that many of you won’t realize is a costume. Which makes it that much awesomer.

So, that makes me curious, Internet. Why don’t you tell Your Aunt Becky what your favorite Halloween costume was?

*Sorry Dad, I’m not going ANYWHERE. You see these grandchildren? THEY MEAN I OWN YOU.

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:

——————-

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*

——————–

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?

——————–

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”

———————

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)