This is not a new post, but a copy of a post that I wrote several weeks ago, that I am reposting for Cali’s Day to Remember. I don’t have it in me to come up with something good enough to say about my Stephie right now, except that I miss her terribly.

———

One of the last truly happy memories I have of my friend Steph was when we went together to see the Rolling Stones. I loved The Stones, but Steph was obsessed. Her bedroom walls were literally papered floor to ceiling with pictures of Mick and The Boys carefully cut from magazines, and she had a typical girlish crush (read: obsession) with Mick Jagger.

Saw you stretched out in room ten-o-nine
With a smile on your face
And a tear right in your eye

I can still see her in my mind’s eye, if I try hard enough, huge smile on her face as she belted out the lyrics to all of the songs (of which, I personally knew only a fraction) while taking drags off her Camel Wide Light.

Couldn’t seem to get a line on you
My sweet honey love

That was my friend.

The same friend who smelled like a garden with me, the same friend who threw my baby shower when I was pregnant with Ben. She (and Ashley) are the reason that for every party I throw, I must have a cutout Hula Girl thrown up somewhere (we found it along with every color of the rainbow baby dolls in our quest for the Tackiest Shower Decorations Ever). She was my introduction to flavored coffees and Opium perfume. I think I still have her copy of ‘œGoat’s Head Soup’ somewhere.

Well, you’re drunk in the alley, baby
With your clothes all torn
And your late night friends
Leave you in the cold gray dawn
Just seemed too many flies on you
I just can’t brush them off

Somewhere, probably up in Heaven, she is laughing at me right now. I can almost hear it’s distinctive peal tinkling over me as I write this. She’s sitting up in Heaven surrounded by stacks of every Rolling Stones record (even the unreleased B-Sides) ever recorded, drinking her ubiquitous cup of coffee, with a carton of Camel Wide Lights by her side, and she is laughing.

She had a beautiful laugh. It was the sort that made you smile no matter what mood you were in, the kind that made other people around you stop and look around for the source (but not because it was annoying or grating, but because it was so full of happiness). I always wished I’d had a laugh like that, and now I just wish I could hear her laugh again.

Tonight I bury my friend.

And the angels beating all their wings in time
With smiles on their faces
And a gleam right in their eyes
Thought I heard one sigh for you
Come on up, come on up, now
Come on up, now

(I am linking here so that you may go over and see what she looked like. I don’t have a scanner, so I cannot scan a picture in of her right this moment like I’d like to).

This week, I’ve been posting under titles ripped from Rolling Stones lyrics as a (pathetic) tribute to Steph, as I know she would have liked it. I don’t have any better way to commemorate her yet, so I will likely continue doing so from time to time. Maybe it’s not as permanent as a tattoo, but it’s something.

One of my own favorite Stones songs has always been ‘œShine a Light,’ but it always confused me until Steph died. The ebullient chorus coupled with the really depressing stanzas always seemed such a disconnect until I looked at them in this light. When I reread the lyrics, it made perfect sense.

Now, if this were anyone else, I’d have scoured The Internet looking for a poem or quote to dedicate, but Steph probably wouldn’t have appreciated that nearly as much. It just wasn’t the way she rolled.

And normally, I refrain from posting lyrics to songs because it makes no fucking sense and offers very little emotion without the music behind it, but today isn’t a normal day.

May the Good Lord shine a light on you
Make every song you sing your favorite tune
May the Good Lord shine a light on you
Warm like the evening sun.

The world is a colder place having lost Steph, although I am certain she is far happier where she is now. But I’m a selfish prick, and I want her back. I don’t want to be attending her funeral tonight. I don’t want to bury my friend.

I want her to come back and tell me that this was the ultimate prank. I want her to jump out from behind a door and yell ‘œPsych!’ and laugh uproariously at my stunned reaction. I want her to be who she was before the disease took her Shine away from her, and I want her to get her life back on track. I want to have coffee and play dates with her, I want our children to grow up together as good friends, I want to sit around and reminisce about the dumb shit we did when we were kids. I want to get old with her and start switching to decaf and vitamins, rather than coffee and cigarettes, I want to laugh with her again.

I don’t want to bury her tonight.

She was my friend and I loved her very much and I don’t want her to be dead.

In a winter that has lasted approximately 567 years (plus or minus) and chock full of disgusting ickle viruses, I am once again sick. For the eleventy-hundredth time.

Rather than solidify my state as a Geriatric Whiner and bore you in my quest to become the Most Boring Blogger Ever, and prattle on about the headaches that I medicate with Excedrin Migraine, which makes my guts decidedly unhappy, so I have to chug Pepto-Bismol in order to stave off the barfing, I will leave you with a question:

The eternal question.

If, for some odd reason, I feel compelled to purchase a pair of gogo boots, and am neither a hooker nor a dominatrix, which would you choose?

The white, black or pink (pink being my favorite color) ones?

And, if I am a self-respecting 27-year old who isn’t planning to use these for Halloween, do I have any business wearing them?

It seems as though over the past 11 months, we have created a monster. A 30 inch tall, 20+ pound monster, who drools, craps his pants (regularly!), and enjoys nothing more than tormenting his surroundings.

Now, even with the colic (and thanks in part to his sensory issues and subsequent autistic spectrum diagnosis) and dislike of human interaction, Ben was a remarkably easy toddler. Once he started trundling along and obsessing about either the planets or the pendulum on the grandfather clock, he was a fairly enjoyable guy.

Sure, he still wasn’t the kid you wanted to take out and do stuff with as he’d get overwhelmed in places like Target (the same way, I presume, that I feel about Best Buy) and fall apart, but as far as behavior issues went, Ben was easy-peasy (until aged 3, when all hell broke loose).

When Alex was born, and my glorious doctor was rooting around in my uterus for retained placenta (it sounds as fun as it felt), I swear on The Baby Jesus that had I not immediately thrust him to the boob, he’d have found a way to levitate there on his own (for comparison’s sake only, I will tell you that when I did the same with Ben, about 5 minutes old–although not only was the not-so-glorious doctor rooting around for placenta fragments, he was ALSO stitching up my 4th! degree! tears!– he not only raised his head away from my gigantic nipple, he arched his back and screamed so loudly I looked around to see what had poked him. Little did I know that this was to be The Way It Was for another year).

Alex is the same child who vibrates with pleasure upon being introduced to brand-new foods, like you were handing him the keys to a Lotus Elise, and eats as much (likely more, if I measured) than his 6 year old brother, AND enjoys the occasional snuggle.

Nope, no Aspy-ness there.

On the other hand, whereas Ben is a complete Follower (much to my dismay) and will do whatever it is that someone, anyone around him is doing (lemming much?), Alex wants things his way. Right now. Bitch.

Along with the mischief making of being 11 months old, I swear again on The Baby Jesus that he has started throwing tantrums. If I dare to give him water when he OBVIOUSLY WANTS JUICE (Mom, you ignorant slut!), he shrieks so loudly that my neighbors may actually be assuming that I’m practicing human sacrifice in my family room.

If, in the form of an “Alex, NO” I tell him gently that tearing magazines apart is not such a good way to spend the afternoon (Mom, you ignorant SLUT!), he screams bloody murder WITHOUT ME SO MUCH AS TOUCHING HIM.

(before you think ill of my child-proofing techniques, I promise that I don’t have much around at his level that he can get into–aside from the occasional dime, of course–and therefore be yelled at for touching. I got rid of my Ming Vases at a garage sale along with my sanity many years ago.)

It’s not as though I have issue with telling kids “No”–which, along with no longer using Red Ink on school papers, is the new wave of brat-making, erm parenting– I just don’t think that he needs to hear it every other word while he’s exploring the house and kicking up dust hyenas.

On the one hand, it’s pretty damn hysterical to see an 11 month old who cannot even walk (yet) get so angry about not getting what he wants AT THE PRECISE MOMENT HE SO DESIRES IT, but on the other, more practical hand, it bodes ill for my future AND my eardrums. Because, primarily, I am the Most Stubborn Human Being On The Face (27 years and counting!) on the planet, and it appears that he is about to try to usurp my title, flailing his chubby wrists at my plight.

It should be an interesting year decade ahead of us.

Wow! I never expected my search terms to turn up so many new people! Hi Lurkers! Thanks for showing your face! Stick around, I’m just getting started here.

(Having Lurkers de-Lurk is thus far the highlight of my day. Stupid snow making life annoyingly annoying.)

I did notice, however, that none of my fabulously sexy Lurkers confessed to finding me through searching for cheeseburger crotch, which makes me believe that there must be more of you out there.

My dear friend Stef tagged me for a meme, the only one I usually do, but anyone who has read me for any length of time knows that I’ve done this one before. Thankfully, being freak of the week, I have a seemingly endless supply of Odd Crap About Me.

Without further adieu, I present to you the Six Odd-er-er things about me (what I should call this is Why Becky Is A Freak):

1. When I was 14, my dreams of becoming an opera singer were promptly dashed by the removal of my tonsils (to be clear, I couldn’t sing before I had them out either. Well, I could sing, but it was and still is a frightening experience) and adenoids. While not having my tonsils has proven to be a Very Good Thing for the state of my health (they were necrotic), it has left me with a most irritating side effect.

I cannot drink from a water fountain without the water coming straight out of my nose. This means that when I blow chunks, it always comes out my nose as well. AND lastly (and sadly for my poor The Daver), it makes the gentle art of a blow job nearly impossible. I promise that having The Spooge come out of your nose is at least as unpleasant as it sounds.

Maybe more so.

2. After years of handling scalding hot plates as a waitress, I have very little sensation for warmth on my hands. Overall, this isn’t that bad until it comes time to give one of the kids a bath, and I have to use different parts of my body (like my elbee-bone) to test the temperature. Because to me, it can be nearly boiling and I would not be able to tell. And I don’t wish to cook my kids in their bathwater (they wouldn’t be very tasty).

3. I have only been tasked with mowed a lawn once in my life, and even then, I bribed my Metal Heads to do it for me. It’s not like I’m phobic about it or anything, and it isn’t even that we don’t have a lawn to mow (we do, oh laws yes, we do), it’s just never been my job. Hell, it’s not really The Daver’s job either (don’t let him fool you) as I pay the neighbor kid to do it.

$20 is so worth it (although I might get a service this year IF IT EVER FREAKING STOPS SNOWING LONG ENOUGH).

4. Despite calling myself “Aunt Becky” on the Internet, I absolutely hate people who assume familiarity (although, possibly even weirder, this doesn’t apply to my blog. Shit, tell me about your fetish for breast milk, it’s cool. And heeeyyy, want to buy some?) in real life. Friendliness is one thing (and I like it), but I if I don’t know you, don’t act like I want to stand in the aisle at Target and listen to your boring life story because I assure you that I want nothing more than to bean you in the head with cleaning products and run away shrieking.

5. Although I do have an abiding love for tomato-based products (mmmm…ketchup…mmm), the very act of looking at a raw tomato makes my stomach heave and threaten to blow. And getting me to touch one would have to be under strict bribery with a brand new purse or something. Damn, even writing about this made me a little queasy.

(shudder, shudder)

Sounds like *I* need some Occupational Therapy, eh?

6. When I was about three, I decided that I no longer wanted to be “Becky” but was going to change my name to “Smurfette.” And even when I tried, no one would call me by that name which inflamed me to no end. I guess my schitzophrenic tendencies showed up early, huh?

Little did I know that when I got older, I *would* be a lone female among a sea of males, just like my idol.

As per usual, I am refusing to tag people for this meme because if I’ve done this one three times, the rest of the Internet has done it approximately 5,478 times, and I believe that not every one is as full of weird traits as I am.

So, I tag YOU, Lovely Internet, Oh Light of my Life, to leave me a comment with an odd fact about you. What’s that you say? You’re trying to tell me that you’ve already DONE THAT BEFORE THE LAST TIME I DID THIS MEME?

Well, Sweetheart, me too.

*air smootches*

…google “cheeseburger crotch not pregnant,” apparently this brings you to my doorstep. While I normally am thrilled to pieces to have new visitors and virtually meet new people, I’m not sure this would be the place you’d want to look for such a thing.

Color me stupid, but I have no idea what a cheeseburger crotch (pregnant or not) is (but this is a highly trafficked term here at Casa de la Sausage).

And I don’t want to.

(okay, maybe I do. But I’m kinda sicked out now.)

How did YOU get here?

(Confidential to the person who found me searching for “i m just living for my kids i have nothing to offer my husband,” that may be the most depressing search term I’ve ever heard.)

I suppose that there must come a time in every parents life when they look at their offspring and wonder not-so-secretly if they are intelligent enough to care for this young life until they leave the home (by DCFS or not). I’ve often mused that people who want to become parents should really take an IQ test prior to trying to make the babies.

Sighs.

(This coming from the person whose children BOTH had a deep and abiding love for Diet Coke and all of it’s battery acid goodness. Don’t hate the player, hate the game, people).

Well, my Moment of Truth (to borrow the phrase from that new lame TV show. Seriously, I had high hopes for the entertainment value of that show. Hopes that were immediately dashed.) came this Saturday morning, when Dave burst in, Alex in tow, interrupting my sleep and a fantastic dream in which I was sleeping on a bed of cake frosting AND EATING IT (my dreams are always bizarre as hell), and not-so-gently urged me awake.

“Alex swallowed a dime,” was the phrase The Daver used to nudge me awake.

“Mmmmm….pink frosting with sprinkles,” I replied, “Oooohhhh, how I love you.”

“Becky, wake up!” Dave pleaded, “Alex ate a dime.”

Well, if there is anything in the world that can rip me indelicately away from beautiful dreams of frosting mountains, that would probably be it.

Because I am non-alarmist AND a health care professional, I wasn’t too worried. I mean, I could have rushed him to the ER, had a full set of X-rays done, so the doctor could inform me that my son had ingested a dime, and that I would simply have to wait and make sure it passed. THEN, I would have gotten a lecture about proper childproofing, like my home was just riddled with loose change strewn about on the floor, and THEN he might tell me that I should probably remove the Lye and Rat Poison from it’s storage space on the kitchen floor, and THEN where will I be?

So, The Great Poop Watch of 2008 begins with a bang. I’ve threatened to make Dave stay home until the elusive dime is passed, rooting around in our son’s diaper like a dog, searching for gold (well, cadmium and nickel), as this did happen on HIS watch (which I remind him of approximately every 2.5 minutes), but I don’t think he’ll do it.

And have no fear, if that nasty dime doesn’t pass in a couple of days, I’ll take him to the doctor for X-rays and a lecture on proper childproofing habits (to be completely fair to us both, Ben never got into a damn thing in his life. He was–and still is– the least adventuresome child on the planet.).

The question is, what do I DO with this dime once it passes? Do I leave it in my wallet to gleefully give to the nastiest cashier that I encounter? Or do I just toss it in the garbage and figure that there isn’t much I would spend a dime on, after all, now that I’m not 5 or 6.

What would you do with a dime that had passed through your child’s digestive tract?

It a wee bit over a month, my darling youngest son turns one. It’s been a long and wild year together, and on the one hand, I am amazed at truly how quickly they grow and on the other, I am shocked that it’s only been a year.

All boring trips down glorious memory lane aside, this means exactly one thing in the practical sense: I need to plan a birthday party for him.

Now, I cannot live down the kegger that was Ben’s first birthday, nor would I even attempt to (March doesn’t seem to be Beer Drinkin’ Weather, at least here in Chicago, so that idea is a bust), but planning a first birthday sounds downright fun to me right now. (The older the kid gets, the less fun the parties become to host. Which is why I will pay huge sums of money to allow someone else to clean up after me).

Besides, Ben’s birthday comes at the most annoying part of the year: The Time of Celebrations. See, from July 15 to September 15, we have four birthdays (Mine, Ben’s The Daver’s and my mother’s AND our wedding anniversary), which means I have approximately 1,574 things to plan, orchestrate, then execute. Am I being overly dramatic here? Well, you be the judge: I myself had two birthday parties, Ben had three, Dave had two, my mother had one, and we celebrated our anniversary exactly once.

It’s a busy time of the year.

But March, although like August, one of my least favorite months of the year, has very little save from Easter that I have to plan. So I’m pretty pumped about Alex’s party.

That said, because I am highly doubtful we’ll ever procreate again (any time I mention it hypothetically in passing to The Daver, he quickly begins to look wildly around for the nearest sharp object with which he can perform a vasectomy. If none are available, he will then start punching himself in the nuts. Our chances at having another child are slim to none), and even more doubtful that if we were to do so that we would have a girl, I have decided on a theme for Alex’s party.

Alice in Wonderland.

I want to throw a tea party for Alex.

There’s just one small, eensy, weensy problem: I have no idea how to do this. Unlike Cars, Batman, or The Backyardagains, there exist no “Alice in Wonderland” themed aisles at my party store (and if there were, it would be the Disney variety, which I’m not as interested in).

I’ll probably end up Ebaying it, and dealing with whatever I end up with, but before I do this, I am begging you, The Internet, in all of your beautiful glory to help a sister out.

How can I pull off this party?

Let me give you my (short) list of stipulations:

It will be primarily adults, and since it’s a first birthday gig, games will not be played. The older kids (whomever comes) will probably play with Ben, and therefore not need games.

I am the least creative person on the planet, but I have a Gold Amex. And am not afraid to use it. BUT, I don’t want to spend an insane amount on decorations, as I’m pretty certain The Daver would have my head (get the Alice in Wonderland reference?).

Even though I said “tea party” I have doubts that I’ll be serving tea. But I will be serving cake (I was thinking funky cupcakes, AND I WISH MY FRIEND MELISSA LIVED IN THE STATES SO SHE COULD DESIGN THEM. See, I have a cake fetish. I don’t eat the stuff, but I love, love, love, love really interestingly designed ones.) So, I will be buying a cake/cupcakes from SOMEWHERE. But they have to be cool.

I can’t cook, but I need to provide my guests with SOMETHING to eat. Preferably something that everyone will eat AND doesn’t require a ton of prep.

Internet, Darling, if you can help me, I will be forever in your debt and I might be so inclined to INVITE YOU OVER FOR CAKE. See, THAT is how much I love you.

In the Great Purge Fest of 2008 (part 1), I have been moderately successful. Save for one thing, one large stash filling up part of my stand alone freezer:

I have approximately 4,380 gallons of breast milk that I have nothing whatsoever to do with.

When I first had Alex, and realized just how freakishly much milk I was producing (ahhh, thank you Fenugreek, who has left an indelible hatred of all things maple syrup related. Seriously, my nursing bras, which I am soon to be throwing unceremoniously away–likely in a fire-y blaze–still smell of maple syrup. If you have no idea what the fuck I am talking about, I’ll break it down really simply: there’s an herb you can take–sadly, it produces no hallucinations– that increases your milk supply. One of the side effects is maple syrup smelling bodily odors: including, sweat, pee, and milk. Oh, YUM. Nothing grosser than looking for Aunt Jemima, that wiley bitch, in the toilet BECAUSE WHERE ELSE IS THAT SMELL COMING FROM?), I scoured The Internet looking for what I could do with the excess milk.

I did call a milk bank or three hundred who didn’t want to accept my goods because “they were full,” AND when I realized that I had both had a cold in that time AND taken a decongestant, I learned that the milk would be unsuitable for a preemie. And Sweet Baby Jesus, the last thing I’d want to do is make life for a preemie worse, what with my reckless use of over the counter decongestants. For serious.

I came across another website, the likes of which I haven’t been able to find again, in which people discussed how they could sell their milk on The Internet to creepy pervo’s who for some reason (probably because their mother’s didn’t love them) got off on drinking breastmilk.

Can we say a collective, “EWWW?”

Buuuuuttttt, this site also informed me that these creepy dude’s would pay up to $3.00 an ounce for the stuff, which would mean that the stash currently occupying the bottom half of the freezer I bought for this exact purpose, would translate into at least $500-600. This could easily buy me a designer purse or two, and that makes me happy.

Shit, pumping is one of the most irritating jobs on the planet, and anything that would compensate me for the time that I spent hooked up to that blasted machine, watching my nipples yanked into positions and shapes I had no idea they were capable of, WHILE being unable to do much else besides think about how bloody bored I was, was a good damn thing.

The downside is that I am far, far too lazy to sell a simple pair of shoes on Ebay, let alone spend the time putting up an ad, figuring out how to send the stuff so it didn’t rot in the mail, or coming up with cute phrases to make creepy Uncle Pervy’s want to buy my goods “Hot Momma Milk” and the like.

So, scratch that idea.

I came across another website, in which the enterprising author had attempted to make cheese out of her stash of breastmilk, and that pretty much wigged me out. I don’t care for cheese anyway, AND color me weird, but I don’t think I could ever, ever ingest any of that milk. PLUS, I hate cooking in the first place, and have never so much as attempted making cheese of any sort, so I promise I wouldn’t start with my own milk.

(shudder, shudder)

I suppose I could thaw some out for the holidays and throw it in my guest’s coffee as a passive-aggressive measure, but I’m not coy enough to do so without being noticed. And I’m too stupid to remember NOT TO DRINK THE COFFEE, so I’d be slurping it down thinking about how great it tastes (breastmilk is very, very sweet. Shut up. You’d try it, too.) before I recalled WHY it tasted so good, and then I’d have to drink Ipecac and spend the rest of the day barfing. I hate very little more than I hate throwing up (aside from Kim Kardashian. I hate her more).

So, what can I do with this stash of milk, which I am going to have to toss in a couple of months? Alex won’t touch it unless it’s on tap, Ben, well, I don’t need to scar him anymore than I already have, and Dave and I would sooner drink our own pee than drink the stuff.

Any suggestions?

A special corner of my ever growing Shit List is devoted to bullies of any age, size, sex, and variety. I hate ’em with a passion I usually reserve for people who park in handicapped spots, or who make their own parking spaces IN FRONT OF THE STORE.

My brother stutters terribly (sometimes incomprehensibly) and recently bonded with my husband over their shared hatred of Valentine’s Day. Specifically because they would go to school, pass out Valentine’s, and receive only a handful back. From teachers.

To someone like me, who has always been (surprisingly!) well received by my peers this seems like the most tragic thing ever.

I hate bullies by proxy. Anyone who fucks with my people (when I’m feeling kicky, “peeps”) is my enemy. Period. End of story.

(I do not, however, hate having blog trolls. In fact, I think I would marvel in rapture if I were to have one. This is the only time I like bullies: when they’re opening themselves up to ridicule AT THEIR OWN EXPENSE!)

Poor Ben, easily one of the sweetest people I have met in my entire life (where he gets this trait, I am not certain) has been dealing with a school bully since the beginning of the year. The school he goes to is small (it’s a Montessori school, for those of you playing along at home) and they’re dealing with it as best as they can, but I get the distinct impression that bullies are not something they are accustomed to dealing with.

The child who is picking on Ben, who I will henceforth refer to as “Ass Face” has been severely reprimanded (although, sadly not with corporeal punishment as I’ve been praying for) to the point of being suspended for several days and having had multiple parent-teacher meetings.

Dave recently met his father at the Father’s Brunch on Valentine’s Day (I asked Ben if I could pretend to be his father so that I could go and he looked at me completely deadpan and said “You’re not a boy.”), and rather than spitting on him like I would have done (because I am a mature, model citizen) had a conversation with the dude. Who swore up and down that “Ass Face” had never acted up this way before and he has no idea where he learned this OR why he’s doing it.

Yeah. Right.

I learned yesterday from Ben (who is also the most honest person on the planet, aside from possibly The Daver, who is PAINFULLY honest) that “Ass Face” teamed up with another child to pick on Ben.

Specifically about the size of his muscles. Which, to me, sounds laughable, but at that age, I remember someone telling me that “I didn’t need a training bra” (I didn’t) and this making me weep. Kids are insane.

So, once again, I dutifully placed a call to the school this morning to ask that the teacher call me back so that we can discuss this yet again.

I know that being picked on is just the standard rite of passage for kids, and that everyone has it happen to them, but I guess I just wish that it wasn’t happening quite so soon. It’s hard to watch this happen to your kid without being able to make it better (i.e. punching the kid in the face. Again, because I am a mature person), and I just hope that I’m doing all of the right things.

*sighs*

What would you do if you were in my (decidedly kicky!) shoes?

Several years ago, after holiday festivities had stretched into week after exhausting week once we’d celebrated with both sides of our families, The Daver and I looked at each other all blearily and spent and made an executive decision: we were going to start combining our familial celebrations.

The way we saw it, ANYTHING was better than having to celebrate 14 Christmas’s (each sect expecting us to be pissing cheerful rainbows and sunshine) stretched out over the course of several months weeks.

As it turns out, we were horribly mistaken. The only thing worse than celebrating Thanksgiving 57 times, choking down approximately 408 pounds of dry turkey and greasy stuffing, was doing it just once. All together.

Now, my in-laws have never been overly fond of me, be it because I am loud and obnoxious, rude and horny, or just because I don’t care one way or another about my socks matching; I don’t pretend to understand the whys about the whole shebang (mayhap showing up to their home the first time I met them wearing a patent leather corset was a bad fashion choice. Who knew?).

And my own parents have (I believe) rewritten history so that they actually birthed The Daver and not me, so great is their love for the guy (hey, at least we agree on one thing, right?). My dad often references the shrine they’ve built to The Daver in their home, where they pay tribute and light candles under a framed picture of Dave for marrying their daughter and taking her out of their care, and just because I’ve never actually seen this shrine with my own two eyes does not mean that it’s not there. I’m pretty sure it is.

So it appears that the only common ground that we all have is our love for The Daver.

Unfortunately, this does not translate well into comfortable family gatherings. Both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year were so excruciatingly painful and uncomfortable that all I wanted to do was to go and hide in my closet with a bottle or three until it was all over.

Thank the stars in Heaven that the major holidays are over for a year, but the minor ones are starting.

Like Easter.

Which both sets want to celebrate on the same day (but not Easter proper).

And we’re at an impasse: do we try (in vain, it seems) to get our families together yet again, thereby ensuring another day filled with discomfort and awkwardness, or do we split it up somehow?

(My love for the holidays, including Easter, nearly rivals my love for Diet Coke, and the fact that they have been reduced to misery really upsets me. I can get over the fact that my in-laws would prefer I was someone else, but I can’t get over that ruining my holiday. My priorities are skewed, I know, but I have no sure fire way of making them like me.)

Shit, I guess we could just change the focus of the holidays entirely to Let’s Pamper Daver And Profess Our Undying Love For Him Days, and maybe we could unite under that guise. I’m sure Dave would like that.

So here’s where I turn to you, Dear Internet, who never leads me astray…whose beauty is unrivaled, and wit unmatched. Those pants look great on you, by the way, have you lost weight? You look amazing today. Seriously hot.

If you were Aunt Becky and The Daver, how would you handle this? Or, if you have nothing substantial to add, tell me an in-law story or three.