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.)

————————

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?

———————

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.

When I was 16, my best friend Rory and I were lazing about my bedroom on a Saturday afternoon like a couple of kittens when we had the most brilliant idea in the history of awesome ideas: Rory offered to cut my hair. Here is the point in the story where I must declare two things:

Rory is not gay.

Rory is also not a hairdresser.

I’ve always had decently long hair, alternating between being about shoulder length and covering the bottom of my boobs. I have hair so thick, when not in the throes of a postpartum thyroid crisis that if it were much shorter, I would likely resemble a cactus, I find anything above the shoulder is sort of bad news for me.

So a couple of times a year, I drag ass to the salon and get it chopped to about shoulder length and let it grow on down until I realize that it’s officially gotten “too long.”

“Too long” for me is anything that makes me look like I might be a member of one of those religions that doesn’t allow women to cut their hair, or when wearing it in a pony tail becomes painful for my neck.

I’d always envied those women with the adorable pixie cuts but never quite had the guts to lop off all of my hair into one. It seemed like an awfully huge commitment for a 16 year old whose relationships were still measured in weeks.

But somehow, to Rory and I, who, I must admit were stone cold sober (as a matter of fact), this now seemed like the perfect cure for boredom. So we grabbed a pair of kitchen scissors and Rory lopped away.

Finally, he told me that I could turn around and when I did I was shocked to see a boy with big dark eyes looking back at me from the mirror. Uh-oh. Rory had given me a boy’s haircut. I gulped. Audibly.

Quickly, I raced upstairs and grabbed a shit-load of barrettes that I’d had laying around and began sticking them in the inch long tufts of hair that I had remaining. I grabbed an eyeliner–it was turquoise (hey, I never claimed to be tasteful)–and smeared it on. Satisfied by my appearance, I went back downstairs to show off my new haircut.

Surely, it was just new-hair-cut-jitters. Right? I hadn’t just committed teenage suicide, had I?

About an hour later, Rory and I had been watching The State on MTV (which, I got on DVD for my birthday and holy BALLS is that fucking funny) and the doorbell rang, our band of merry pranksters had arrived and we were off to do whatever it is that you do when you’re 16 and you have money and nowhere to really go but the world is all so new and wonderful and it’s all so fun.

Everyone had been over to my house BEFORE my haircut and, well, 8 mouths dropped open when they saw what had been done to my now-pin head.

To their credit, everyone was kind to me, probably, in looking back, kinder than I deserved.

(This, I should add, is where I’d humiliate myself by putting in a shot of me with my ridiculous hair so that you, My Internet, could tell me that “it’s not THAT bad” while you snicker into your cupped palm.

But, alas, I lost the book of pictures with all these snaps in my last move and I am actually so devastated by this that I cannot make a joke. I have no digital copy, so these pictures are simply lost. They’re gone forever and I cannot get them back.)

It was only from the back that one of my friends spoke the truth, “Hey Becky, you look like a lesbian now.”

I sucked in my breath sharply at this statement because he’d identified it exactly. I was now sporting the exact same haircut as all of the lesbians at school.

Always someone who had her own sense of style, which, one might properly argue is “tacky” and “unrefined” as noted by this iPhone cover that I am currently crushing on, or the belt buckle with my name on it or any other number of awful tacky things in my closet, I’m not always very quick on the uptake with things.

Something YOU might see as painfully obvious, I won’t notice for YEARS. I’m someone who could wear anal beads as a bracelet and not understand why people were snickering at me while I preened over it, so the haircut? Wouldn’t have realized it.

Well, I might have once the lesbian posse at school started hitting on me, but that was neither here nor there.

Truthfully?

I made an ugly lesbian. The haircut I can safely say was never going to be flattering on someone like me, no matter how much glitter I sprinkled, how many barrettes I clipped or diamonds I wore, short pixie haircuts aren’t my thing.

They make me look like I have a baseball where a head should be.

Thankfully, my hair eventually did grow out, although it took painfully longer than you’d think possible, and I had to go through all the stages of awful: cactus, Bozo the clown, Pig in a Wig, and eventually, back to my shoulders again.

And I learned a very valuable lesson that day.

I have a teeny, tiny head.

———————

So, loves, tell Your Aunt Becky all about your worst haircut experience. Was it a bad perm job that took on only a fraction of your hair? A home dye job gone horribly awry? Did half of your hair fall out? Did you routinely get mistaken for a lesbian?

No, Fair Reader, your eyes are NOT deceiving you, I did change my layout! It wasn’t that the lovely and talented Admin’s design wasn’t awesome, it was just that I needed something that was widget ready.

Do let me know if you see something wonky and let me know which operating system you use, because I have a Mac, which should mean something to someone besides the guy on the Mac commercial.

Also, I added a feature called “threaded comments” which, means that I can now easily reply to your comments VIA EMAIL. So, rather than adding a pithy and no doubt insightful comment inside the comment box, I am now attempting to reply through email.

This means two things:

1) if you actually care to see what I have to say, check that you’ve left me a valid email address

b) don’t reply to the email directly because I think that it would go to email purgatory.

————————-

Back at the beginning of the summer, I went to see a shrink for exactly one visit before determining:

1) that I would never be the sort of person who would be comfortable sitting around discussing My Feelings without feeling like more of a narcissist than I already do (I blog, people. Come ON!)

b) My mental health benefit sucks balls.

But while I was there, I got to take this big fancy test, which thrilled me intensely, because I happen to adore taking tests. ESPECIALLY ones that have questions like, “I have flown across the ocean 45 times this week” because the answer is an obvious YES.

From this inventory, among other things, it was determined that I have incredible difficulties with Feelings. I don’t understand them. I don’t know how to express them. I don’t know what to do with them when I feel them. He suggested that I might need to go back and somehow relearn all about feelings.

Some of you are probably rolling your eyes right now because it sounds pretty far-fetched, but I think the dude and his 212 question inventory was probably on to something here.

While I have managed to escape my fucked up childhood relatively unscathed, I’m not sure that you can say to your husband, like I did on Sunday night conversationally, “Well, no matter what you do, I mean, don’t feel TOO bad, because you know, at least YOU didn’t cancel CHRISTMAS for me, heh-heh-heh. Sure, maybe you were late coming home this week, but you didn’t cancel Christmas.”

Did you catch that?

I made a joke about the time my mother canceled Christmas for me to make someone else feel better. Because it happened. She did. Everyone else had Christmas as usual. Except me. Other people got me stuff, just not her. I’d been “too bad that year.” And the kicker? If I brought it up, no one would remember it.

Now, that situation is a lot of things, but it’s not very funny. I don’t find it funny, I think it’s awful and it’s sad.

I do that a lot of the time when I shouldn’t: I discount the things that I’m going through. I’m sure there’s some jargon for it, but I’m not a psychologist and I wouldn’t know how to Google it if I could, so I won’t. So, here on Mommy Wants Vodka, we can call it the Other People Have No Legs Syndrome.

Or the Reverse Pain Olympics, if you prefer.

Because in the Pain Olympics, if you have a splinter in your finger, I have a stake though my arm and require immediate blood transfusions, sympathy cards, a parade in my honor and several crosses to get on.

But in the Other People Have No Legs Syndrome, rather than allowing yourself to feel badly for, oh I don’t know, maybe having a bad day just because you had a bad day, you’re stuck thinking “well, how can *I* be upset about being overtired when there are people in the world WITHOUT LEGS.”

So you don’t feel bad about your day, you move on. Eventually, though this builds up.

I’ve had a really hard year.

I don’t tend to blog about it anymore, because I’m kind of tired of how those kinds of posts bring out the leg-less, armless, fingerless masses. One might wonder how these people type, but, I’m fairly sure that even assholes can figure out how to make their point clear. Maybe they can type with their tongues, which must make them amazing at performing oral sex.

But somehow along the lines I’ve decided that’s how one is supposed to deal with these sorts of hard situations, you know, being a single parent during the week, having had a stressful childhood, day-to-day bad days: by just pretending that they just don’t exist.

As one of my wise commentors and friends pointed out, denial is a very powerful and often useful thing because it allows you to get through the hardest times without falling apart into a blubbering pile of goo.

But when that’s the only way that you can manage your problems, is by saying, “well, at least it’s not cancer!!” That takes away from the very real day to day problems that I do have and you know what?

That isn’t fair. So this is me, trying to give myself permission to have feelings and allow myself to feel them.

This isn’t an earth shattering revelation and probably to many it seems like it should be a “well, DUH” sort of moment, but even the very act of writing this down here, having to form coherent thoughts (shut UP) has really helped me. I feel like a weight that I didn’t know I’d been slogging around behind me has been lifted now.

And don’t worry, before all of you frantically claw your way to the “UNSUBSCRIBE” button, I don’t plan on turning this into a blog about my feelings. They’re still boring and trite and don’t make a whole lot of sense and while it may not seem this way, I do keep some amount of things to myself.

So this is me, Your Aunt Becky dipping a toe in the water here. I can’t ever picture myself as one of those people sculpting what “anger” looks like in clay form and I don’t think I’ll devote years of my life writing bad poetry about my sadness, but maybe I’ll learn something.

Maybe I won’t.

Progress, not perfection. Because if I were perfect, I totally have flown the around the world 45 times this week while curing cancer and baldness and world hunger.

Today over at Toy With Me, I’m telling the story of my first (and only) visit to the strip club. I can only hope that you have similar stories of abject molestation to share with me. Or, at least perhaps you can get a laugh at my expense.

Just don’t ever say I never give you anything.

Click the smiling beaver below to be taken away:

Or stick around for a Blast From The Past, for those of you not wanting to imagine me with a pair of testicles on my face (I do not know why not):

———————

Becky: “Do you like my manicure?” (playfully wraggles black fingernails in Daver’s face)

Dave (grabs hand for closer inspection): “Ooooh. Freaky! Won’t Ashley be mad that you had black nail polish put on for her wedding?”

Becky: “Nah. It’s perfectly vogue now. It’s no longer JUST for goth chicks.”

Dave: “Ah.”

Dave (grabs her hand again. This time her right hand, although not unkindly): “Wait a minute…is your wedding ring STUCK ON?”

Becky (sheepishly, in a small voice): “Yes.” (pauses) “I kept in on too long after I got pregnant with Amelia. And now I can’t get it off.”

Dave (eyes take on a mischievous gleam): “You know what this means, right?”

Becky: “Please don’t take me down to the fire station to get it cut off. I’m so ashamed. I HAVE FINGER FAT NOW.”

Dave: “No, no. I wouldn’t do that. And your finger looks great. But…”

(pauses dramatically for effect)

Dave: “You SEE this ring? IT MEANS I OWN YOU.”

Becky: “That’s MY line, assface.”

Dave: “And look at how badly it blew up in your face.”

Becky: “Touche.”

I’m a purger.

I can hardly go a week without finding something to pass along to someone else, give to the Salvation Army, throw away or recycle or otherwise dispose of. This is probably a good thing because once, while we were moving from our condo in Oak Park to our current house, I found a receipt that Dave had saved from Target.

Curious as to what he had bought that he had so steadfastly guarded for so long, I saw that it was 3 years old and had 4 things on it: a plastic garbage can, beef jerky, Fritos and…wait for it, wait for it….

…..

…..

…..

kitty litter.

Oh yes. You read that right, Internet.

Thank sweet merciful sweet baby Jesus in heaven hallowed be thy Halloween name that he had carefully thought to store that receipt so lovingly on the floor of his office and move it with him not once, not twice, but three times since then.

Before you call “Hoarders” on me, a show that I cannot watch because I think that I would physically hurt myself either clawing at my skin or eyeballs (and because I don’t find people with obvious mental illness really gosh darn hilarious television), it’s not that he was saving it because he had any attachment to it, it just never dawned on him to throw it away.

Just like it never occurred to him to get rid of his box of cassette tapes that I personally lugged from apartment to apartment and I finally lugged DOWN to the dumpster after I realized that we didn’t own anything to play Milli Vanilli’s greatest hits, (an oxymoron of a tape if I ever saw one) any longer.

(Although in the interest of full disclosure here, I still sing “Blame it on the Rain” in the shower)(what? Like you don’t.)

Lately, I’ve been itching to purge my house of stuff, and while I have managed to go through several of the cabinets in the kitchen, ridding myself of such awesome condiments as a mysterious can of “Kraut” I have an entire genre of stuff that I cannot seem to go near:

Baby Stuff.

You see, my uterus, it’s vacant.

With the exception of an IUD, should Daver continue to be “too busy” to get his vasectomy, I’m done having children. 3, like that wily School House Rock says, has always been the magic number for us. Although I’d always imagined having an assload of children, Dave assures me that 3 kind of IS an assload of kids.

If anything, skating so closely by with Amelia’s neural tube defect reminds me of just how fragile life is and how fucking lucky any of us are to be walking around upright, presumably not dragging our knuckles, slack-jawed and drooling (unless, of course, you’re me, in which case this IS the norm).

I’d read somewhere in my scant research about NTD’s that they are more common in siblings, which reminds me that I must do more research for something I’m writing for the March of Dimes, and since I’ve been on folic acid since dinosaurs were my classmates, well, I don’t know. Would you want to risk that one?

(that really wasn’t up for debate)

Dave’s done, and I’m pretty sure that no matter how many crotch parasites I popped from my delicate bits, I’d always be sort of wistful for one more. Just one more.

Chicago has 2 seasons: Balls Hot and Balls Cold and last week it went from being Balls Hot to Balls Cold and I noticed that my daughter had nothing to protect her rolling rolls from the searing wind.

I also noticed that denial is a pretty powerful thing: she’d been pretty quickly outgrowing her 6 month onesies (she’s 8 months old now) to the point where she was regularly popping open the snaps of the crotch as she scooted along the floor.

I hadn’t wanted to see that.

Just like I hadn’t wanted to go through her clothing bins to sort out the teeny tiny clothes and hats because unlike the last time, this really was The Last, Last Time.

Never again will one of my children wear that frilly dress or that spotted onesie with the frog that Alex used to wear or the hat that was Ben’s or the pink sweatshirt that I bought with my friend Steph when I found out I was pregnant with Ben who I just KNEW was a girl that I’ve carefully saved for my daughter for 8.5 years.

Those wee hats and tiny mittens won’t go on my gnome-like babies, and the bassinet that we so carefully picked out for Alex will have gone completely unused by any of our kids.

I know in my heart that I prefer my children to be children rather than garden slugs, but there’s just something so…sweet about a new baby that you just can’t get back again. I look at pictures of all of my babies as ickle babies and I can’t believe they were ever so small.

I’m not going to let their things go, though, like I normally would, chomping at the bit to get it out of here. For now, all of those memories sit in bags in Alex’s room along with the broken swing where Alex slept for the first 7 months of his life and the bouncy seat where Amelia spent several of hers.

I hope that the smell of their babyness will stay there, in the fabric, so when they’re big and gruff and smell like the woods and grass and dirt and rocks, I can go and grab a bag and open it, and inhale that sweet baby smell, the essence of their babyhood and where they began.

And remember when they were so small and good and when I could fix everything with some warm milk and a cuddle and a blankie. When I could stick my face in their neck while they slept to breathe in their smell so that I could carry that with me as I went about my day.

When we could curl up together like peapods, just the two of us against the world.

I hope that will always be enough for me.

Why Aunt Becky, I can hear you exclaim, you look positively AMAZING for having pushed what appears to be a 30 pound 4.5 year old out of your cootch!

And I will tell you, there, there, Internet, this is what happens when you have children when you are a broke 21 year old: you don’t have any digital pictures handy.

PLUS, you look WAY better in postpartum pictures this way.

Notice how much BETTER I looked in the picture with Ben than I do in this one taken after giving birth to Alex?

Juuuust kidding. Wear a condom, kids. Not kidding. No glove, no love, okay?

If you look closely, you’ll see why Ben is The Person of The Year. This is Ben meeting Alex. Look at Ben. Now look at Alex. Ben still adores Alex. I do not know why.

Ben deserves a medal or something.

And lastly, my Cinnamon Girl. My sweet baby Amelia. My last, last one.

Dear Aunt Becky,

I am a mom of an 8 month old beautiful (and perfect, of course) little girl. One of my closest friends has a 6 month old son. During our pregnancies, we were both really excited to have kids so close together, saying they could grow up together like siblings.

But after my friend had her baby, she changed. I know everyone changes after they have their kids, but this is extreme change. She has this holier than thou attitude, judges all of my decisions as a mother (and everyone else’s parenting choices), and it just seems that now that she has a child, she’s looking down her nose at everyone. I love my daughter, and do what’s best for her, but my friend takes the cake when it comes to overprotective. She won’t take her child outside for more than a trip to and from the car for fear of mosquito’s and *gasp!* the sun. She won’t let anyone hold her baby for more than a few minutes. I could go on and on. Normally, I’d find this behavior to be overprotective, but wouldn’t think much of it.

However, she’ll make rude comments to me when I do take my daughter into the sun or let other people hold her, or even babysit her. I let this go in the beginning, thinking it may be a postpartum issue, but it’s gotten to the point that I’m sort of ready to end this friendship, but I feel horrible for doing it. When you have a friend that goes absolutely insane judgmental after having a child, do you stick by and hope it will go away, or say “Peace out” and head your separate ways? Is there a way to suggest she speak with her doctor about postpartum depression without offending her?

———————

There are a lot of really cutesy terms people could make up to call your “friend.” They’d probably involve a lot of hyphens and Capitol Letters and maybe some RANDOMLY CAPITALIZED WORDS, but I’m going to be uncharacteristically brief here: I’m afraid that your friend has turned into a kind of bitch.

It happens sometimes to new parents, and forgive me if I’m wrong here, because maybe I am, but their personalities, well, sometimes they change.

I don’t imagine that there’s any way that you’re going to politely be able to tell your friend that she’s being insane because she won’t see it and that she should seek help because I’m sure that she thinks that she’s being nothing but rational.

YOU, my friend, will be made out to be the asshole no matter how delicately you phrase it and I’m sorry. I know a couple people that I have thought about politely nudging toward Prozac and have decided to keep my wide trap shut for once in my life. There is just no way to say it without looking like a jackass.

Maybe, just maybe, your friend will return to who she was, but only if she realizes that there was a problem on her own (or at the suggestion of her spouse). Could you speak with the spouse?

If you can’t, I’d walk, nay RUN away from this person, because if there is ANYTHING that I have learned from being a parent for over 8 years it is this: people who live their lives FOR their children are not going to be your friend.

*Gasp, won’t SOMEONE think of the CHILDREN?!?*

They will constantly be comparing their Darling Johnny to your much less adorable Little Billy. Noting you will ever do will pass muster. I’m sorry. In this case, it’s really not you, it’s her and her Perfect Little Suzie. I promise. You cannot possibly win.

Being the eternal optimist in pessimist’s clothing, I’d probably distance myself as much as possible, because REALLY, who needs to be badgered by a friend that often, while hoping that my friend would come back. But really, I’d probably prepare myself for the worst.

You do always seem to lose people during the major transitions in life. I’m sorry, love. It’s not you, it’s her.

——————-

Will I ever reach a point where my appearance matters more to me than the appearance of my kids? Or will I go through the rest of my life licking the PB off their cheeks and brushing the hair out of their face but personally shunning a mirror like the vampire I am?

With the way that my mother still lunges toward my brother and I if she detects the slightest hint of a pimple forming on either of our delicate hairlines, I’m assuming that the answer is no. But she was wearing earrings today and, well, I didn’t brush my hair when I left the house to go blow a wad of cash on clothes for my kids. I own 3 shirts that fit properly and my children could go months without doing laundry.

Also: do you want to make out with me now? I’ll let you touch my boob.

—————————

How do I win at LIFE, Aunt Becky?

I’m pretty sure it does NOT involve mayo, pickle relish OR John Mayer, but I’m sensing that a lot of you may disagree with me on this one.

—————————-

Because this felt like I ended it really abruptly (AND because I felt all naked today from not posting today–posting every day of the week is kind of—stalkery on my end, isn’t it? Like, I should I give YOU a break from me and my stupid antics or something.) I am presenting you with a festive shot of my daughter:

She’s too young to run away yet, but the look in her eyes is pleading, Internet, please, please…

….pass me some yogurt.

In a rare moment of altruism and because he happened to come across a set of *ahem* incriminating photos of *ahem* me that he *ahem* threatened to share with you if I didn’t, I sweetly offered the use of my blog to my friend Kevin, even though I am a control freak of the highest order.

Normally, I don’t give it up for PSA’s and what-not, although you’d be surprised that I do get people emailing me to remind you, My Gentle Reader’s about about important water safety tips and stuff. Those go immediately in the trash, because, obviously, but, you know, pictures and blackmail, and shit, if I were Kevin, I’d want as much help as I could get too. I know that you’d help me out if the roles were reversed. EVEN WITHOUT THE PICTURES OF ME AND THE HORSE.

It’s the right thing to do.

Kevin of Always Home and Uncool has asked me, The Coolest Person he knows, the only one who would return his emails, to post this as part of his effort to raise awareness in the blog-o-sphere of juvenile myositis, a rare autoimmune disease his daughter was diagnosed with on this day seven years ago.

The day also happens to be his wife’s birthday.

*

Our pediatrician admitted it early on.

The rash on our 2-year-old daughter’s cheeks, joints and legs was something he’d never seen before.

The next doctor wouldn’t admit to not knowing.

He rattled off the names of several skins conditions — none of them seemingly worth his time or bedside manner — then quickly prescribed antibiotics and showed us the door.

The third doctor admitted she didn’t know much.

The biopsy of the chunk of skin she had removed from our daughter’s knee showed signs of an “allergic reaction” even though we had ruled out every allergy source — obvious and otherwise — that we could.

The fourth doctor had barely closed the door behind her when, looking at the limp blonde cherub in my lap, she admitted she had seen this before. At least one too many times before.

She brought in a gaggle of med students. She pointed out each of the physical symptoms in our daughter:

The rash across her face and temples resembling the silhouette of a butterfly.

The purple-brown spots and smears, called heliotrope, on her eyelids.

The reddish alligator-like skin, known as Gottron papules, covering the knuckles of her hands.

The onset of crippling muscle weakness in her legs and upper body.

She then had an assistant bring in a handful of pages photocopied from an old medical textbook. She handed them to my wife, whose birthday it happened to be that day.

This was her gift — a diagnosis for her little girl.

That was seven years ago — Oct. 2, 2002 — the day our daughter was found to have juvenile dermatomyositis, one of a family of rare autoimmune diseases that can have debilitating and even fatal consequences when not treated quickly and effectively.

Our daughter’s first year with the disease consisted of surgical procedures, intravenous infusions, staph infections, pulmonary treatments and worry. Her muscles were too weak for her to walk or swallow solid food for several months. When not in the hospital, she sat on our living room couch, propped up by pillows so she wouldn’t tip over, as medicine or nourishment dripped from a bag into her body.

Our daughter, Thing 1, Megan, now age 9, remembers little of that today when she dances or sings or plays soccer. All that remain with her are scars, six to be exact, and the array of pills she takes twice a day to help keep the disease at bay.

What would have happened if it took us more than two months and four doctors before we lucked into someone who could piece all the symptoms together? I don’t know.

I do know that the fourth doctor, the one who brought in others to see our daughter’s condition so they could easily recognize it if they ever had the misfortune to be presented with it again, was a step toward making sure other parents also never have to find out.

That, too, is my purpose today.

It is also my birthday gift to my wife, My Love, Rhonda, for all you have done these past seven years to make others aware of juvenile myositis diseases and help find a cure for them once and for all.

To read more about children and families affected by juvenile myositis diseases, visit Cure JM Foundation at www.curejm.org.

To make a tax-deductible donation toward JM research, go to www.firstgiving.com/rhondaandkevinmckeever or www.curejm.com/team/donations.htm.