Come out! Come out! Wherever you are!

I know you’re out there, my wonderful lurkers, I can seeeeee you.

Okay, I can’t REALLY see you, altho convincing my son that I am psychic is a stroke of pure genius. Honestly, you should do it.

So here’s where I beg of you, my lurkers and lovingest of the loving followers, to help a sister out. My Home Girl Emily (who has probably never been addressed as a Home Girl or Home Slice by anyone but me) nominated me awhile back for some awards.

I checked today after forgetting about it for ages, and I see that I’ve got about 28 votes. 28 is a lovely number. I am 28 years old right now. Soon to be 29. But I know for a fact that I have more readers than that.

So I propose a tit(s) for a tat (hehe TITS): If you go over to this site and vote for me:

(I was nominated twice, because THAT is how cool Em is)

Registering takes about 20 seconds and is not at all annoying.

Come back and leave me a comment telling me that you did. Then ask me a question you want me to answer–no topic off limit–or a special request of something you’d like me to do for YOU. (I cannot cook) I’ll vote for you if you want me to, I’ll write a post about a topic of your choosing, I’ll even do something embarrassing and humiliating and tell the internet all about it if that is what you want.

Thank you, Internet, for being there for me when I needed you to be. Have you lost weight? You’re wasting away in front of me. But your ass looks fantastic in those jeans.

I puffy heart ALL of you.

Alex asks, “Please vote for my mother. She’ll love you forever and somehow make you Rice Krispy Treat Cuppy-Cakes.”

Last week after sprinting jauntily to the mailbox to see if I’d finally won that bazillion dollars I keep hearing about (a Nigerian Prince TOLD ME SO), when I found a pile of junk mail. After sorting through it, I realized that I had one piece that was not junk. From the county. Dreading anything I ever get from the county (on principal, not because they send me Nasty-Grams. DOWN WITH THE MAN!!), I tore into it.

It was a referral for Amelia to Early Interventions.

This wasn’t the first time I’d seen this paper (the name of the child was different, of course) and for some reason it smacked me blind. It’s SO not the end of the world to have a kid that needs some therapy. Shit, she’s in decent shape, by comparison (and by comparison, I mean NOT DEAD. Because this kills a lot of kids), and I really need to get the fcuk over myself.

I guess I’d just been in denial the whole time. Like going through the day to day motions with all that goes on in my Circus of a House, without thinking, honestly THINKING about what a diagnosis of encephalocele really means. I am, apparently, the only one who thinks this way because I called The Daver at work that day in a mild panic:

(ring ring)

“Hello?”

“OHMYGOD DAVER, OHMYGOD.”

“Uh…what?” (he knows better than to really worry when I call in a panic)

“Amelia….got her referral to Early Intervention,” I waited to hear him freak out.

“….” Typing sounds in the background.

“…and?”

I sighed deeply before we hung up. Apparently, I am the only one who is bothered by this. Figures.

I need to put on my big girl panties and just call for the appointments and evaluations, I know I do. Well, okay, I’ll tell YOU Internet, but let’s keep it between us, okay? I actually DID call. And then I promptly hung up when someone answered. Maturity has never been my strong suit, you know?

So I will do what I always do! Distract you with pictures! Because what else can I do? AND WHO DOESN’T LIKE PICTURES?

The Devil doesn’t. I swear.

I know that I post more pictures of my younger kids and while that would make it appear that I am favoring them, I assure you that it’s not.

This, this picture is Ben, In Real Life. Always in motion.

And this is my second born, Alex:

Playing with bath crayons. Outside the bath. Because he is that kind of kid. (what the fuck ever that means)

Daver was sick a couple of weeks ago with the flu–influenza I mean–and slept pretty much 24 by 7 for a week. While I am normally annoyed by him and his irritating and incredibly dramatical Man Colds, my cold, mean heart felt sorry for him.

MAYBE IT WAS THE SWINE FLU!! OH EM GEE!! (note the 2 exclamation points which should illustrate just HOW emphatically emotional I was being) Actually, I think it might have been.

And lastly, Amelia says, “You moron. It wasn’t the fucking swine flu.”

I spent the morning paying someone to take chunks out of my cervix, which, trust me, is even less fun that it sounds. I didn’t mention it here, not because I didn’t want to whine and pout and stomp my feet, but because, dammit, I heard the weather this year and it didn’t call for a shit storm.

Plus, with all the medical shit that’s been going on I feel like I might have Munchausen’s, or, at the very least, an ugly flair for the dramatical. And nothing annoys me personally more than someone who is constantly convinced that they are dying of a rare form of syphilis and expects that everyone else wring their hands along side them.

(and no, I’m not talking about you.)

But I went for my Uncle Pappy at the same time as my 6 (8) week post-partum check up and low and behold, I had another bout of abnormal cells on the old cervix. I had my first experience with the abnormalities of my cervix while about 6 weeks pregnant (and bleeding!) with Amelia and (thank you God) decided not to pursue the biopsy at that time. Because yeah, even if they found that I needed to have my cervix shaved, would I really do it while pregnant?

(it’s supposed to be rhetorical but in case you wanted an answer, here it is: No fucking way)

So after waiting on bated breath last week to find out that, no, my mother does NOT have breast cancer, I waited rather impatiently to find out my own cancer status.

While I wasn’t really thrilled by the whole notion of having my cervix manipulated and doused with vinegar, I tried to think of the bright things:

1) I don’t have a real use for it anymore

2) Perhaps I will be told that my cervix is the most beautiful the doctor has ever seen and I can gloat about it (like I did after my colonscopy. Side note: Daver wouldn’t allow me to put pictures of my colon in our Christmas cards that year. Ass)

3) I happen to have a wicked love affair with vinegar

4) I can spend the rest of the day moaning and lying about the house while I make The Daver do things for me (say it with me now: Yeah, RIGHT)

5) It will make the Vicodin I want desperately to pop actually serve a purpose other than getting Really Fucking Stoned.

Still, though, I was nervous. What was it going to feel like? Like birth without an epidural (a special shout-out to the lack of epidural-y goodness I had with Amelia! Hooray!)? Like a bikini wax? Like having to go to the DMV? I just didn’t know. And not knowing shit makes Aunt Becky pissed off. Almost as pissed off as people who talk about themselves in the third person.

So I dragged The Daver with me after guilting him about having to go alone, something that proves to be a Very Fucking Good Idea, indeed.

And what can I really say about the procedure itself? It started off totally bearable, the vinegar stung like a mother-fucker, and the biopsy itself was not so terrible. Honestly.

But (we’ve established that there’s always a Butt, right? Otherwise I wouldn’t be telling you this story)…

I noticed that I could feel myself, well, gushing blood. The nurse and the doctor scurried around, changing the pads underneath me, putting plastic bags on the floor, and going through packages of 4×4’s like it was going out of style.

Apparently, I have a bleeding problem. So much so that after the pathology gets back, my OB wants me to see an Internal Medicine doctor. She has (and I quote) “Never seen someone bleed so much” and should I require follow-up (F/U) care in the form of removal of bits of my cervix, I will have to go to a surgery center.

I’m less upset about this and more amused, because at this point, sometimes you realize that being paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Whomever “they” are.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make some tinfoil hats…

Now, if you know anyone who is a nurse or trying to make YOU become a nurse, one of the things you’ll hear a lot of is this: “But nursing has so many opportunities.” And it’s true.

IF (and there’s always an IF or a BUTT–hehe–isn’t there?) you have sucked it up and completed your floor rotation for a couple of years. Which I had not done. And I was not about to do, because I’d have ended up in Happy Horse-Shit Sanitarium drooling and twitching. Having an autistic kid had tried my sanity enough and it just wasn’t going to happen for me.

So, when staring down the nose at paying two mortgages, my (significantly less) fat butt kicked into gear. I interviewed for such positions as a 3-11PM on an Ortho/Neuro floor where the average patient ration was something like 6-7. That’s a fucking ton of people who can’t walk needing you to help them do, well, anything.

Then there was the Sunshine Nursing Home. I walked in, interviewed, noticed that the small vestibule between the outside and inside smelled like piss and was told by a very sad looking RN that if I wanted this job (gestures around sadly) to just call her back. Yeah. No. Thanks. Not thinking that suicide is in the cards for me.

My last beacon of hope (before I went to the dark side of case management) was through a temp agency. While I wasn’t thrilled about being given an hours notice of potential work for a night, they paid really fucking well, and I didn’t have to go on a gazillion interviews and explain yet again why I’d taken a break between graduation and that point in time (a couple of months). Tedious, is thy name.

But something that they had for me that didn’t require huge amounts of floor training was at a prison. A Juvenile Prison. I’d be filling in for a staff nurse who was going to be out for brain surgery. Weekends, hours were great, and it was about 20 minutes from my house.

Fucking sweet.

I drove to my parents house, anxious to share the news and pick up my son, and was greeted with a whole lot of, “you’re kidding, right?” and “please tell me you’re kidding.” The Daver was okay with it but no one else could believe that not only was I about to go work in jail, but that I was thrilled about it.

I reported for duty on the ass-crack of my first morning and was immediately given a huge ass key chain. See, now you make fun of janitors for having a fucking pocket full of keys, but I thought it was rad. I was given a brief orientation by the head RN and left to my own devices after being warned not to let the kids lock me in the med room.

Okay, that mental picture is making me laugh. O! Vicodin you wily bastard!

This, this I could do, I told myself as I wheeled the cart of meds around passing out drugs and making sure the kids swallowed them. Apparently they’d been having problems with kids hoarding NSAIDS.

(no one said teenagers were smart all of the time)

It was a fucking great gig: I never had to put any of the kids in the time-out room, and despite the head RN worrying about my pasty ass the kids and I got along pretty well. No one locked me in the med room. Not even once.

I *loved* it. I’m a rare breed who happens to love teenagers–even the fucked up asshole ones–and despite the fact that I appeared to be a pushover, they learned pretty quickly that I was a force to be reckoned with. Plus, how cool is it to work in a prison? Seriously now.

The lady I was covering for recovered much more quickly than she’d anticipated (mayhap like a certain DAUGHTER of mine who kick the ass of brain surgery. Hells yes!) and I was summarily left jobless again.

The rest of the story is even more boring and tedious, but a quick recap: ended up in case management/hospice and worked on extending benefits for those at the end of their life.

(Do I know how to pick uplifting jobs or WHAT?)

But shit, if I could go back to work at the jail again, I’d do it in a heartbeat. If for no other reason than that I could legitimately whistle Folsom Prison Blues while I worked.

After my Ben was born while I was still in college, I had to reexamine the whole, “I’m gonna be a doctor” dream that I’d been nursing for as long as I could walk and talk (to be fair, however, I should point out that it wasn’t bloody likely that I was going to get into med school anyway.). So I had a choice: teaching or nursing. The only two professions I was likely to make any scratch at upon graduation.

(okay, hindsight being what it is, I should have broadened my horizons somewhat. I hear there’s a huge need for Underwater Basket Weavers these days.)

I settled on nursing, knowing that I *probably* wasn’t going to like it. My family wasn’t entirely supportive of my choice, and to be completely honest, I really didn’t know what nurses did. Besides get HUM-VEE’s as a sign-on bonus at hospitals.

I’ll give you a second to laugh.

..
..
..
..

Okay, done?

But the moment that I walked into my first nursing class, I knew I’d made a mistake. I was NEVER going to like it. I spent the first day (no seriously) learning how to properly wipe a patient’s ass. Important, yes, but did we REALLY need the power points?

I’d already done a year of pre-reqs and I knew that if I brought my sorry butt back to my parents (where Ben and I lived) and begged to change majors, it would be another tick mark in the Becky Sucks A Lot category. Which was already steadily outpacing the Becky Might Not Suck Quite So Much category.

So I sucked it up, thinking that I could do anything for awhile. I’d just go back to school when Ben was older for something I really wanted (I knew then that Medical School was out, but microbiology was in. Kind of like skinny jeans except not). I’d get by. Whatever.

I graduated 2 years later, my BSN neatly in my back pocket and still completely aware that I hated the profession I was about to enter into. So what? Plenty of people went to their 9-5 hating every second of it, right?

About 2 months before my wedding (which, as any bride knows, is when things start to go apeshit), I made the gravest of errors. I’d gone in to interview for an ICU position at a local hospital, and I let the HR person talk me from the ICU position (the only position I swore I would do in a hospital) to a Cardiac Floor.

Floor nurses, I should add, lest anyone think I hate NURSES which I do not, deserve a special place in heaven. Really, they do. Hospitals are run by them and they’re notoriously used an abused by pretty much every single staff member. It’s hard work. And it’s NOT the sort of job one can fake it ’til they make it.

Any job that comes with a Do This The Right Way So You Don’t Get Your Ass Sued Off disclaimer is a job that you need to LOVE. Otherwise, in this litigious-happy society, do you really want to bet your own house that you gave the patient the right meds?

I didn’t last 6 ever-loving weeks on the floor I later learned was a Bad Floor. Bad management trickled down into a bunch of unhappy employees who constantly undercut each other. No wonder HR wanted me there: they had a ton of vacant positions.

After 6 weeks, at the not-so-delicate urging of my soon-to-be husband The Daver, we decided that I was going to stay home with Ben for once. Which I did, nearly at the cost of my own sanity, for a couple of months until we moved back to St. Charles and the prospect of dueling mortgages left me once again looking for work.

And then I found my perfect job…

Part II will air tomorrow. I know, I know, I’m an asshole for the cliffhangers, I’m sorry.

So, The Internet, have you ever had a job that you absolutely hated? I don’t mean “disliked” or even “really disliked” I mean HATED so much it that thinking about having to go into work left you sick to your stomach.

Like you, I have plenty of ideas as to what makes a Good Blog. I don’t care for the sidebars of stuff that make my computer take forever to load, I think that music on blogs should be banned (because it scares the ever-loving shit out of me when I click on the blog), and I get a little skeeved when the owner is always begging for money.

Having a best friend in marketing, though, has made me notice things I’d have previously ignored. See, when I first started blogging–back when Jesus was my classmate–I had no idea that blogs could be used as a marketing tool. I couldn’t IMAGINE being asked to review something, much less have my audience want to read what I thought about the newest plastic wrap.

But after I started to read OTHER blogs, I noticed that some of the bigger bloggers ran review sites. Curious, I clicked over. It was just what you thought it would be: random blogger giving their (glowing) opinion on something or another. The reviews were unfailingly positive and often kind of dull. It wasn’t the bloggers fault, no, but how do non-marketing folks make the newest brand of paper towel sound interesting?

I mean, shit, I ignore the television commercials, and those cost a fucking ton of cash to professionally produce.

But print media as we know it is (sadly) going the way of the dodo bird, and advertisers have found the next media: The Internet. Especially blogs. Have a problem with a company and have a trafficked enough blog? Send the CEO a link to your scathing review and watch how quickly the situation is resolved. That’s some pretty powerful shit.

It might shock you to learn that I’m frequently contacted by companies asking me to review something or another for their company. I know, I’m just as amazed as you undoubtably are. I can’t believe that someone would want MY seal of approval or be associated with me.

Because I am no doubt VERY MATURE, I do the RIGHT THING and ignore these emails. I just haven’t decided if I should start a review blog. On the one hand, it’s immensely flattering that I’m asked but on the other, I feel enough like a sell-out simply having ads on my blog. I’m not a corporate writer or advertiser, I can’t sell stuff to save my own neck, and more than anything else: I have great pride in my blog and I don’t want to change what I say to conform to The Man.

And, as my friend Trish asked HER blog readers (she was talking about book reviews), because a company gives you a product to review, do you need to give that product a good review? I don’t think that I could. Honesty is more important than hurt feelings and bad press.

So here’s where I pose it to you, Internet (did I tell you that you look fucking hot in those jeans?): what do you think about review blogs? Should your Aunt Becky start one (because of my aforementioned ads, I cannot review stuff here) or would that make me too much of a sell-out? I genuinely cannot decide what to do.

And more importantly what annoys you about blog designs? I’m getting a redesign because I’m noticing a surge of this particular template around The Internet so I’m-a-goin’ custom.

When Amelia gets Hulk SMASH! Baby she has developed an incredible way of getting what she wants. She lets loose a fart or two that literally blinds me with it’s suffocating garbage-dump-like smell. Then she smiles broadly as I hand her the keys to my car and my Amex Gold Card.

Clever kid.

What is your superpower?

Today was one of the rare days where I had someone to watch the kidlets so that I could go to the store without someone trying to scratch my eyes out (Alex), scream their head off (Amelia) or pout when I won’t throw some cash down for Spiderman Froot Snaks (Me).

First stop was the pharmacy to both make sure that I won’t have any more babies and undo some of the damage my previous two pregnancies have done to my husband’s cholesterol. And while I was at it, I figured I’d pick up a heating pad for my sad, sad back. I’m gonna horde the SHIT out of that Vicodin.

This is what I came across:

It has both the words “deluxe” and “auto-shut off” on the front. Since I have a habit of starting random fires by complete accident and because my brain has turned into swiss cheese, I require appliances that will shut the fuck OFF when I leave them on.

And who doesn’t like DELUXE stuff. If it SAYS it, it must be. Packaging NEVER lies.

How could I go wrong? But wait a galdarn second here…What the…

DUDE. DUDE. DUDE.

Bwahahahaha!

*wipes tears from eyes*

Bwahahahaha!

Look at the look on that guys face!

Doesn’t he look like he’s enjoying that heating pad A LITTLE TOO MUCH? He looks like he’s about to make sweet, sweet love to it.

Which?

Bwahahahaha!

Then I ran back and forth along the aisles looking like a complete nutter as I’d forget, then remember, then forget again things that I needed. What? I never claimed to be smart.

So then, after making a brief detour to get some sympathy cards (you know you’ve bought too many sympathy cards when you can actually tell when new stock has come in), I continued to my final stop: The book section.

See, my friend Marinka is doing some kind of reading of Ulysses or something. She’s trying to better myself and well, I’m just here. I tried to read Ulysses for about 5 minutes while I was going through an I’m Deep phase and it made almost no sense to me. And since these days, People Magazine is starting to make no sense to me, I’m thinking that Ulysses might be a stretch.

But no worries, I will flex my literary muscle in OTHER ways. I’ll show HER.

Like with this!

There are a bunch of words in the title, right? And they don’t make much sense either, right? (also, the blurriness was because an employee was watching me crack up at the romance novels and I was trying to be all stealthy)

AWESOME.

But then…I was overtaken by THIS:

I simply couldn’t go wrong. This book is sure to be full of “throbbing manhoods” and “oiled pistons.”

I can hardly wait.

I’ll show Marinka whose all literary and shit! Aunt Becky. That’s who.

At 20-odd weeks pregnant, pretty sure that I wasn’t going to miscarry anymore, I finally bit the bullet and signed up at all of the formula companies websites. Having had a breastfed one and a bottle-fed one, I figured it was safest to err on the side of caution. Plus! Bonus coupons!

A couple of weeks after Amelia was born, Similac began to descend upon our house. I got a couple of freebee cans in the mail (hooray!) and was signed up for their new program crap they mail me. Obviously, I read it VERY closely. But, along with some $5 off coupons (bonus!) were some printed sheets of colorful circles. The sort of shit that babies are supposed to see and love. I’d not bought into that craze, so I didn’t know one way or another.

Figuring, what the hell, I threw them up on the wall by her changing table. As long as my cheap ass didn’t have to shell out for them, why the hell not?

Well, those circles are Amelia’s best friend on the planet. She coos to them, beams her million-dollar smile at them, carries on regular conversations with them, and would probably lay there, kicking and squacking happily if I didn’t have to do such things as 1) care for her brothers or 2) occasionally pee.

Well played, Similac, well played indeed.

But I can’t help but wonder, what the hell is it that she sees when she looks at them? Nancy Regan? The remains of Elvis? A treasure map to a pot of gold coins at the end of a rainbow? Children in general mystify me completely, but babies even more so. What I wouldn’t give for a moment inside their head.

Then I might know what they’re thinking when they do things smear their walls with toothpaste so that they can wake up in the middle of the night and lick them. Or what makes Amelia giggle when she sleeps. Or even why Auggie has adopted some of the wee Beanie Babies Amelia was given in the PICU as his very own babies.

Wait, Auggie is my dog and he often eats poo for sport. I don’t care why he does what he does. Just so long as he doesn’t bathe any of us with his Tongue of Doom.

I read somewhere on one of the blogs I frequent (okay, sorry I can’t give credit. I am both high and sleep deprived) that when babies smile in their sleep when they’re playing with the angels. Considering how many I know who have lost so much, I like that idea best.

Girlfriend is thinking about her circles.

I know, I know, the angle of this is all wrong because you cannot see the rapture in her eyes. Here’s where I confess to you, Internet, that I am short. Not abnormally so, but I’m not a gangly one (hehe. Say that out loud. It sounds like “ganglion.” hehe) (What? I’m easily amused!). Sadly. If I were taller, I’d have been able to take a better shot.

Perhaps I’ll buy some lifts for my shoes. How hot would THAT be?

Last year, ’bout this time, in between Miscarriage #1 and #2, The Daver sat me down and said something to the effect of, “blah, blah, blah..You need to get a hobby…blah, blah, blah.” At least I think he said that. I wasn’t really listening. I was too busy lobbing a lamp at his head.

He wasn’t trying to be unkind in anyway; he’s a lot of things (patient, kind, infinitely tolerant of His Old Ball And Chain) but never unkind. He was merely trying to get me to “expand my horizons” and “do something for myself.” Come to think of it, he sounded a hell of a lot like my High School Guidance Counsellor. All he needed to add in there was an “apply yourself” to make the comparison fail safe.

But telling someone that hasn’t slept for more than 1-3 hours at a stretch in close to two years (a very hearty thank you to my youngest son and my predisposition to that old bitch Insomnia) or taken a shit without the watchful eyes of half of the family in as long isn’t really a wise idea. Of COURSE I needed to do something for myself, who doesn’t?

Problem is, and always has been, my decided lack of free time. Well, that and the fact that I’ve been pregnant and/or nursing for the past 3 years, both of which obscure my normally sunny disposition (shut UP.).

I mean, yeah, I’m home with my kids and all that stuff and I do have the time to occasionally sit down and plop out a blog post, but I normally have a kid on my lap while I do it. See I can’t very well open a bag of Cheetos and turn on Lifetime and leave the kids alone. For one, Cheetos stain like a mother-fucker and for Part B, no one, not even the baby likes Lifetime. Not that I would know or anything.

My God-Almighty Plan has always been that I would go back to school once my youngest was in school herself. It’s been indelicately suggested that I try and go back sooner but honestly, I juggled the school/work/child thing when I had Ben and it was gruesome. I won’t do it again unless I have to.

See, I got my degree in nursing not because I am a Caring People Person(tm) (stop snorting. I can hear you laughing at me!) but because I was a slave to the almighty dollar. Single parenthood and undergraduate degrees in Biology don’t exactly scream I’ll Be Able To Support Us, Honey, And We Can Move Out Of Grandma’s, now do they?

And while I strongly considered becoming a Trophy Wife, I didn’t think that my child would really sweeten the deal for someone who likes silicone and bleach blonde hair.

The compromise always was (to myself and later to The Daver) that I would eventually go back to school and pursue my PhD in microbiology. No, seriously. I’ve been lucky enough to know what I really, really love and what I’ll really, really be good at. I know this doesn’t happen for everyone.

But I’ve got some time before this Plan Of Action will Come To Fruition. Time that I desperately need to fill with something. Anything.

I write here and sometimes elsewhere and I do it because I don’t know how not to anymore. It’s weird to me because I never was A Writer. I tried in the 3rd grade to keep a diary and it ended up sounding so incredibly stupid when I read it back to myself that even back then I knew it sucked.

I can’t write a fictional story to save my life unless the main characters name is E-Becky and she has three kids: E-Ben, E-Alex, and E-Amelia. I’m not creative like that. But now I write because I have to. I just have to.

So from now until I’m able to rejoin the ranks of smelly stoned college students once again, I’m afraid that my only outlet and project is to write. Here, there, everywhere (okay, so mostly here. Where else?).

Any other suggestions for things to do for myself? What do you do just for you?