The whole “nurses make the shittiest patients,” isn’t an untruth. It’s like somehow, since we passed the NCLEX*, we’re immune to everything, duh. And if we do happen to become ill, we’ll get over it like BAM! Because, again, didya SEE my NCLEX score? I totally aced that puppy.

I’ve been sick since I was a baby. At my first well-baby visit, I had a damn ear infection. I’d blame it on my mother, because that’s en vogue and all, but truthfully, she nursed on demand, she didn’t smoke or do drugs, we were organic before “organic” was a buzzword. I’m surprised I didn’t come home in a burlap onesie, but then again, it was the end of July (I had to stay in the hospital after I was born. ABO incompatibility, for the three of you who care) and my grandmother had bought me some frilly frock from Neiman Marcus.

Anyway, I was off and on antibiotics for ear infections until I miraculously outgrew them. Then, my tonsils were all, I DO WHAT I WANTZ, and I got strep throat every three weeks – like fucking clockwork.

(these were the days, I don’t have to add, where ear tubes weren’t yet the standard of care for multiple ear infections and having a tonsillectomy was considered in bad taste – instead, I had to wait until they had actually rotted – age 14 – and then have them out. The ears, well, they’re still tube-less).

I’ve been sick more or less, since birth.

Which is why I don’t pay terribly much attention to it. While I joke that I’m moaning histrionically at the ceiling, letting out a croaked “Why God, WHY ME?” I’m actually on the computer working my balls off. Or in the garden, “sweating it out” to the Golden Oldies.

You shut your whore mouth while I’m listening to my Golden Oldies.

See, if I spent the time I was ACTUALLY sick moping about the house, I’d never get anything done. And if I didn’t get anything done, well, the world might actually implode keep spinning like it always does. No seriously, I know** nothing would happen if I stopped for awhile, but I’m not the sort who relaxes well. When I’m told that I should “relax” a bit, I laugh. Not because it’s a bad idea, but because without heavy doses of vodka, I just can’t. My version of “relaxing” is only scheduling out 4 weeks of posts for Band Back Together and writing 2 resource pages while deadheading THREE rosebushes rather than 16.

Why?

Because I realized a long time ago, like at least three weeks ago, that I love to work. I need my mind to stay occupied to stay sane, and while tiny crotch parasites are, in fact, entertaining, singing songs about pooping is only entertaining for so long. So I push myself. When I get down, I push harder, I push until I pass out. Stopping? Well, that’s bullshit. I’m unapologetic about this – I am a work-at-home parent and I love it.

Until I get the pertussis. Or the pneumonia. I’m not sure which exotic Oregon Trail disease I have at the moment – only that I’m hawking up tree-frog sized balls of phlegm – and that I’ve been confined primarily to the couch until The Guy On My Couch and The Daver see fit to let me up.

All of this sitting around doing fuck-nothing has reminded me of this: in all my efforts to work harder, do more, and push push push, I’ve neglected the one thing that I shouldn’t have: myself.

Certainly I’m more or less sane (as sane as anyone who calls herself “Aunt Becky” and wages anonymous wars on Internet users like John C. Mayer). My children are happy, polite, and charming individuals. My home? It needs a dumpster, but that’s a different story. I realized this:

Each thing I do, I rush through so I can get to something else.

While normally, this poses no problem, I realize that I’ve neglected even the most basic of self-care – I’ve needed a hairs cut for months. My feet need a pedicure and a tiny Asian woman (probably speaking ill of me under her breath) wielding a razor.

In short: I need some time to myself. Wherein I do not work. Wherein I do not care for small squirmy people or large squirmy people. I have decided that it’s time. In fact, it’s so far PAST time that I can barely cop to it without feeling shame.

There will be no more “I should’s,” or “I can’s” in my vocabulary. No more guilt if I fall short of my mark.

Instead, I will set aside an hour every day – without pity – to myself. I will do something that benefits me, rather than those around me. If that means sucking it up and getting my hairs did? I will do it. If it means relaxing on the couch with a book while someone else cares for squirmy small people? So be it. If it means taming my eyebrows or waxing the cat? That’s what it means.

And I will do it.

Why?

Because I’m worth it, dammit.

And? So are you.

P.S. Pranksters, what do normal people “do for themselves?” I’m asking for, urms, a FRIEND.

*The National Council Licensure EXamination for nurses.

**”know”

I wandered into the foyer, acting on a tip from my friend Stef, who’d gleefully informed me that “they were hiring.” It was good enough for me; providing, of course, they didn’t expect me to wriggle into one of those slinky butt-short outfits or something – I was still lugging around the 60 pounds I was sure would just MELT off me as soon as I began nursing my new son, who, of course, would love me beyond measure, as I morphed back into the 140 pound 21-year old I’d been, happily fitting into my size 4’s by the time I had his first well-baby visit.

You can stop laughing now.

Okay, I’ll wait.

…

…

…

Done? Good.

Providing I didn’t have to wear Spandex, I was all over this job. I needed to do SOMETHING. I’d signed up for school, but managed to pop the kid out the very day that classes began, and I opted to stay in my hospital bed rather than waddle into college, with entrails and birthy shit hanging out of my vagina.

We’ve already discussed that I’d look like a fire hydrant if I’d tried to wear spandex, so that fantasy was out. So was the one where I’d lovingly feed my son, who’d gaze at my face and smile; making this whole single-parenthood thing okay. He was kinda…unpleasant. The kid, I mean.

So going back to work sounded like a plan and a fucking half.

Plus, it was working as a waitress, something I’d been doing in some form or another since I’d turned sixteen. I loved the hustle and bustle of working with so many opposite personalities. I loved the rush of getting five tables at once. I loved the way the glasses clanked in the dishwasher as I walked past, carrying my tray high on my shoulder.

Half of my co-workers I knew from my previous stints as a server, one of them, Nikki, was my oldest friend on the planet. Going to work was sorta like walking onto the set of Cheers, only with pizza. (I don’t think they had pizza on Cheers, but I could be wrong) We’d work our full weekend shifts (5-12PM) and then go out and drink the night away, laughing about the person who demanded 75 different drinks all with the one particular mixer we were out of, then wept once we informed her we couldn’t make it. The guy at table 42 who barely acknowledged me, except for to point out some spot on the floor he wanted me to clean. The crusty seahags who told me, over and over, as though I were not only stupid but deaf, “that’s Half-Diet and HALF-Coke.”

The job was tough, but at the very least, when people screamed at me, I could fix their problems, unlike a certain fire-hydrant-shaped baby who seemed convinced the world was out to get him, who screamed without the ability to be pacified.

We’d stay in the restaurant long after our shift ended, drinking from the bar, and swapping horror stories. It was the closest thing to a family I’d had in years. Going to work was like a salve – it was the one thing I could do, and do well, without making other people upset with me. And if they DID get upset? I could always have one of the other servers handle it.

(and by “handle it,” I mean “Walk by their table and fart”)

The politics in the restaurant, after I’d handily shed the baby weight (a full year later) and enrolled in nursing school, got to be a bit much. Restaurants are incestuous places – you can hardly go around a corner without seeing one server grinding up on another, or the bartender grabbing a quick feel on the new hostesses boobs. One of the servers, and a friend of mine (whom I later diagnosed as having Borderline Personality Disorder – thanks, WebMD, or, as I like to call you, You’reGonnaDieMD.com) had begun dating one of the managers, another friend of mine.

She managed to get between our friendship by whining about me to him, then telling him whatever I’d replied with, and doing the same to me: “Did you know that Sergio thinks you’re too fat for XYZ?”

Soon there was a rift between Sergio and I, each of us she’d handily played against one another. While he was an honorary uncle to my son and a good friend to me, he began looking for any excuse to fire me. With whatever drivel she filled his mind with, I can’t say that I necessarily blame him.

But I watched my back – any fuck-up on my end would be immediate firing.

Things only got worse when Sergio’s girlfriend (my friend) got “pregnant.” I don’t know and don’t care to speculate upon whether or not the pregnancy was something that was in her head or not, but I do remember her showing up on Friday night, then on Saturday night, weeping openly in the tiny closet of a manager’s office. Then, she waited outside for us to close the place down.

When we did, she erupted.

She ran into the restaurant, screaming incoherent obscenities, and trying to attack Sergio, throwing plates around on the floor, shoving an entire tray of freshly-washed dishes onto the floor, where they shattered. I got an elbow to the face when I tried to grab her. Eventually, she went out the back door, leaving a trail of broken dishes in her wake.

Phew, I thought, as I iced my eye. She’s gone.

Except she…wasn’t.

She was in the parking lot, where I could see her jumping up and down on my manager’s car, kicking and punching it as though it were a particularly annoying mosquito. It was bewildering.

The cops came.

I gave my notice the following day. On my last shift, where I may have gotten a cake and a bunch of free drinks in the past, I simply walked out the door, with that ominous-this-isn’t-quite-over feeling in the pit of my gut.

Months later, safely ensconced in nursing school, dating The Daver, I realized I had a bit of a cash crunch. Both Sergio and his former girlfriend had been fired, management had changed, and I decided that it was time to go home again.

I called the restaurant and was asked to start that very Friday – a stroke of luck if I’d seen one. I’d been prepared for things to have changed; I simply didn’t know how much. That Friday was an object lesson in why you should never, ever go home again.

The new manager (slash) waitress was a coke head, not terribly uncommon among servers, who all seem to abuse their problems away, who was up and happy one minute, and the next, she’d be stealing my tables and/or telling me that I needed to pick up an extra table, why hadn’t I done it yet? All in a very heavily accented Polish voice.

She was careful to ensure that I’d get the back station, the crappiest in the place, where I’d make, after a whopping 5 hours – thirty bucks. Considering how busy I was with school and raising my kid, it was hardly worth it.

But I waited it out. Certainly brighter days were in my future, right? We’d had so much FUN!

The end came, not with a whimper, but a bang.

I, once again, got into a fight with the manager (slash) waitress (slash) cokehead about a particular table, who was either in my section or not. She’d either stolen it from me or not: I was never clear on the details. Either way, once she began screaming at me in front of the entire dining room in Polish, I realized that it was over. Done. Finished.

I mustered whatever dignity I had left, smoothed my stained and somewhat tattered apron down, and left, never to return.

The place is still there. I have no doubt the manager (slash) waitress (slash) cokehead is still embezzling the restaurants cash to pay her gambling debts and throw the rest up her nose, although I’ll never be sure: I certainly have no desire to go in and find out.

It wouldn’t be the same.

The Guy On My Couch gleefully cackled as he boasted, “MY daughter got dysentery!” I glared over at him, jealously, and said under my breath, “ass,” which I soon followed up with, “Are you going to leave her behind or sell a wagon wheel?”

“It’s my DAUGHTER,” he replied, “Of COURSE I’m going to leave her behind.”

I glowered into my Tiny Tower, angrily naming my spa, “Facial Cum Shots,” which normally would’ve netted me at least five seconds worth of giggles, but I was too bitter to even enjoy that particular gem.

I remember the day that our class was introduced to a dull row of depressingly beige computers, their monitors a blank black, the words on the screen a delicate green flower. “This,” our librarian announced proudly, “this is what we’ll be working on next.”

We’d been doing a unit on the California Gold Rush – I’d even gone as far as to make a terrarium scene with rocks -n- shit that I’d carefully painted gold with one of those markers you can snort and get high – and we’d taken a trip to the Old West-Themed Portillo’s* in Naperhell. What, I wondered, glowering a bit at being taken away from the books I’d so treasured, was so awesome on a computer?

My classmates may have been thrilled by the usage of the row of dingy beige machines, but I’d practically teethed on computers. My father, a certified geek-a-holic had been certain to own some of the first home computers – to this day, my brother and I have an unspoken agreement that whenever either of us gets a new gadget or computer, we’re sure to show it off to my father. He, in turn, immediately goes out and one-ups us – if I have the newest, pimpest, 17-inch MacBook pro, he’ll get a video card worth 2K to put into one of his 37 home PC’s. After all, who wants to be outdone by his children?

(answer: not my father)

Anyway, I teethed on the keyboard of the computer’s we owned. My dad lovingly taught me to tell time and use a clock using various combinations of bendable floppy discs that he’d have to insert quickly, then remove, while the screen hummed a nice green color.

Computers, well, they were not exciting to me. They performed a perfectly functional task; I used them when I needed them, and I was just as happy to write it out by hand, although, I must admit that half of that has to do with my father, who insisted that we go through haz-mat decontamination procedures before we grubbed up his precious computers.

So when the librarian sat us down and had us turn on our computers, I was nonplussed. I’d just spent an hour in the book stacks working out how my 5 BFF and I were going to be JUST! LIKE! THE! BABYSITTERS! CLUB! books. I called dibs on Claudia but I’d been summarily outvoted.

While our computers took the normal fifteen minutes to boot up, I sat there, giggling with Ryan, the guy who sat next to me alphabetically, about making our calculators say “SHIT” if we turned them upside down. He was in the middle of demonstrating how he could make his calculator say “FUCK YOU” when the computer finally popped on.

There it was.

Oregon Trail.

Each week, we’d get to play our game, learning that those who rode the Oregon Trail were really fucking pixelated. I was thrilled to learn that my characters could both get sick and die. I began naming my characters after particularly hated teachers and hall monitors, and being all, “Ford the river with my wagon – missing a wheel – and weighing 837229 pounds? WHY NOT?” Then they’d die, and I’d end up back at square motherfucking one.

Oregon Trail became the benchmark all other video games were measured against. It’s why I never got into games like The Sims, even though, I’ve been informed by my girl Crys, one can similarly name people after loathed enemies and make them depressed, so all that they do is wander around looking for cats to pet.

When I saw that I could download a version of Oregon Trail for my iPhone, I was nearly ecstatic. While the number of people that I’d avidly disliked had decreased since age eight, I could imagine a few people I wouldn’t mind leaving behind after a particularly vicious snake bite. Fuck selling a wagon wheel – let ’em rot in the sun!

What I found disappointed me. While I could “fish” or “pick berries,” not a soul died on my expedition to Oregon, a place I’d actually visited (and found to be sorely lacking in bathrooms)(fucking hippies).

So when The Guy On My Couch found and downloaded the same game for Android, I was smugly superior – “You won’t like it,” I nearly sang. “No one dies.”

Except his daughter. And his wife. And several of his ox.

Apparently, the Android version of Oregon Trail was more gruesome, as he happily pointed out.

I went back to my Tiny Tower and sulked because I couldn’t change all of my pixelated people to be named “Dirk Diggler.”

By Saturday, I realized I was getting sick. No worries, I told myself, like I always do – it’s probably allergies or rheumatic fever or something similarly unglamorous. I made myself a Green Death Flavored NyQuil cocktail and passed the fuck out, certain I’d wake the following morning full of piss and vinegar.

Over night, I’d gotten up a few times and noted that there appeared to be water running. I, in my NyQuil stupor, assumed that it was someone taking a bath or doing laundry, because that’s what normal people do at 2AM, right? They bathe and/or run the sprinkler?

The following morning, I groggily dragged my ass out of bed, cursing my NyQuil hangover, and schlepped off to the couch, joining both The Guy on my Couch and The Daver who were in an avid discussion about something that did not involve coffee or donuts – the two things I was most interested in.

The sounds of running water filled the living room, and eventually, I stopped their discussion about the merits of deep fried food to ask the question: “What the fuck is that sound?”

Daver and Ben both sighed – “The water heater went out,” they replied, in the sort of creepy unison that happens when two grown men live together in an intimate environment.

“Oh,” I replied, nodding, as though I had any fucking idea what that meant.

“Already called the plumbers, they’ll be out tomorrow,” Dave replied.

“So wait – can I flush the toilet? Take a shower? Water my plants?” I asked.

“Nope,” again in unison, the replied.

“It’s like Oregon fucking Trail,” I replied, still in my NyQuil stupid stupor. “We should trade in a wagon wheel or something.”

They just stared at me.

The following morning, I woke up and wandered downstairs, grumbling about wearing pants and coughing up what appeared to be a rainbow in phlegm form. Daver, head in the computer, looked up as I walked into the room.

“Jesus,” he said. “You sound like a whale just sat on a baby seal.”

I just nodded my head, which made my ears pop unhappily, bracing myself against the dining room wall.

“Go to the doctor,” he commanded. “We’ll have running water soon.”

Too sick to protest, I made my way to the doctor where I was diagnosed with the dazzling trio: bronchitis, sinus infection and double ear infection. One more illness (I was hoping for Pink-Eye) and I could’ve been entered into a lottery for a chance to win a bubble to live in.

I returned home to find that Dave had paid the plumber with a wagon wheel and some rattlesnake meat, and I curled up onto the couch, wheezing softly.

“Three days,” I said to no one in particular. “I’m setting us behind schedule three days.” I fell asleep, visions of fording a river dancing in my head.

*a Chicago-style hot-dog joint

So…

Hi! Is this thing on?

It came to my attention (when Becky yelled something at me about blah, blah, blah, guest post something people need to know!) that you’ve all been asking some questions about me. Who is this Guy On The Couch? Where did he come from? Can I get one at Targhetto? So, I’m here to set the record straight(ish) and tell you all a little about me.

My name is Benjamin, I’m a Midwestern boy at heart and came to Chicago last fall because I decided that I just hadn’t had enough of gambling that the frostbite wouldn’t take my toes this winter. Some of you already know that, because you work with, read at or follow The Band and have seen me at work, or seen my writing about being the face of Bipolar Disorder. I’m glad, but for those of you who haven’t, click the almost-invisible link there, and you can read all about it.

Basics – I’m thirty-one, tall and thin, sarcastic and had a blog that I wrote at until I stopped having the time to dedicate to it, which the internet has mostly – blessedly – forgotten all about.

So, the advanced course, Benjamin 301 – taught by your favorite professor, Yours Truly goes like this: There was this one time when I was 19, living in Minneapolis and walking through downtown in the summer with my friend Evan. Evan and I had been friends for time out of mind, and we were both about equally strange people. We’d met in grade school and stayed friends on and off since then, and we liked to hang out together because it made both of us feel a little bit more normal to know there was someone else out there who was just like each other.

Walking through downtown Minneapolis, we got stopped by one particularly flamboyant member of St. Louis Park’s fairly extensive GLBT community. Tall, thin and beautiful, she stopped dead center in the middle of the sidewalk in front of us – where we’d have no choice but to stop short – to stare at Evan’s shirt. I’ve never seen another shirt like it, before or since, and it was the shirt against which all shirts are measured in my head.

Robin’s Egg Blue, with cheerful white lettering that proudly proclaimed “Nuke a Gay Baby Seal – For Christ!”

It was the most brilliant shirt I’d ever seen, cheerfully calling out dozen’s of different types of hypocrisy at once, all wrapped up in a little sarcastic package and colored pale blue so that people really weren’t apt to look at it unless it mattered to them.

Arching one haughty eyebrow at us, she slowly said, “nuke a gay baby SEAL? FOR CHRIST?!” To which we responded, almost in unison and totally unplanned, “Well, you’ve gotta nuke something, right?”

She let us pass, I think she may have been too busy having a heart attack to stop and question us further about whether it was any kind of seal, or whether we had it out for one type of seal in particular. I think the thought of religiously-motivated nuclear pinniped genocidal catastrophe was just too much for her to really think about all at the same time. Did I mention that we were both atheists?

I’d say that pretty much sums up who I am, so read on and enjoy, and now you know a little more about The Guy On Becky’s Couch.

Hope you don’t regret it!

School, if you haven’t heard, is out for summer.

*cue guitar solo*

Hear that noise? That’s the sound of hundreds of parents weeping at the impending “I’m booooooored,” that will pepper each and every  conversation from now until August, a date that seems impossibly far away from where I’m standing. Oddly, I like having my children around, even the ten-going-on-sixteen one, who has his moments of sweetness interspersed with what I can only assume is the beginning of puberty.

Hear that? That’s the sound of me weeping into my cup of coffee.

Summer vacation in my house meant two things: it was going to be ass hot, and my mother, as soon as I awoke, would hand me a slice of bread to eat as she booted me out the door, locking me squarely outside. It’s not that she didn’t like my company – I’m quite certain I was both a gentleman AND a scholar – it’s that she simply didn’t want to listen to me whine about being bored.

And, with kids of my own now, I can’t say I blame her.

We were a rowdy pack: there was my BFF(slash)mortal enemy (we switched it up every other day or so) Ashley, my best friend David Cook (no relation to the American Idol winner)(PROBABLY), and a couple of other kids thrown in for good measure. We got into all kinds of mischief and mayhem, or, what appeared to US to be mischief and mayhem. Mostly, we played American Gladiators and watched women’s wrestling.

Foxy boxing was, well, foxy.

We were a pack of free-range kids. Our neighborhood was tucked well out of the way from traffic, so the few cars that drove past did so slowly enough that we could pull in our hockey nets before getting run over. We had Lemonade Stands, played Ghost in the Graveyard, and, once, in a stunning fit of brilliance, peeled half the bark of the birch tree in the front yard.

I’ve been sorta sad my own son hasn’t gotten to have that experience. Ben’s the type of kid who, bless the good lord-n-butter, lives with his head permanently in the clouds. I’m being for-serious when I say that he’s the kid who’d be all, “Oh, you have KITTENS in your car Mr. Trenchcoat Dude in the Child Napping Van? LEMMIE AT THE KITTIES!”

It’s less a personality defect and “GRAAAAPPPPP” *hair falls out into a puddle around me* type of situation. I’m EARNING my bald patches.

Which is why I’ve been looking forward to this. The day has FINALLY come.

The younger two are now old enough to play in the front without me having to have a coronary because the teens that live in the houses surrounding mine like to use my normally-quiet street for drag racing contests. It’s like toddlers don’t know they shouldn’t go in the street or some shit. Clearly, toddlers are stupid.

Last night, I stood in my backyard, perched atop a precariously placed step-stool*, kicking myself for not weather-sealing the privacy screen that my roses use to climb upward, because black spot is a motherfucking asshole that I’d like to kick in its tiny fungus ass.

Below me, and oddly not trying to shake the ladder, my children clamored about in the backyard, a motley band of neighborhood kids all in one space, using the swing-set that I’d once bought for my (then) only child and eating Popsicles I’d had stashed away in the freezer for such an occasion. I listened to them chatter back and forth, “telling” on each other, playing dodge ball, pulling each other aside for “secrets” and, finally, having an American Idol-type singing contest.

(my kid, I’ll have you know, sang “Eye of the Tiger”)

I smiled, one of those soft quiet smiles you give yourself when you feel you’ve done something right.

American Gladiators may be long-since over. Foxy Boxing may only occur on YouPorn. I don’t own a birch tree (I own an Ass Tree that’s infected with an Ass Boner). I plan to pay my children NOT to host a lemonade stand.

But finally. FINALLY my kids? They, too, are becoming free-range kids.

Here’s hoping one of the toddlers reminds his older brother that he should not, in fact, accept candy from strangers.

If only I could train my roses to kick blackspot in the taco – THEN my life would be complete.

This is a random picture of Alex’s handiwork – apparently, he learned how to water-board while at school.

If you look carefully, you can see the reflection of an orchid in the bowl – it’s like one of those optical illusions. I wonder if you can see Jesus!

*Don’t ask me why anyone within a five-block radius thought that me standing on a step-stool was a good idea.

I was a waitress for close to ten years. And by “waitress,” I mean that I worked anywhere from the hostess stand, to the busboy station, to slinging drinks behind the bar. And for most of those years, I loved it. I love people, I love meeting people, and I’m one of the better bullshitters I know. It’s an art form, really.

During my stint as a waitress, I learned how to deal with people. I think every teenager should be forced to spend a year working in a restaurant in order to properly prepare them for the real world, where some people are assholes for no fucking reason, and rather than pee in their drink you simply smile and nod. It’s a good life lesson – being able to stare someone in the face that you hate, while not letting on that you’d rather be curb-checking them somewhere.

I realized, during my final stint as a server, that I was done. Just DONE. I couldn’t do it any more. Why? Someone had the audacity to ask me for a refill on their soda WHILE I was on the way to get them a refill.

HOW DARE THEY?

(I kid, I kid, I drink Diet Coke like it’s going to be extinct)

If I’d continued working there, I’d have ground my teeth into nubs by the end of each shift.  I could no longer smile and make nice while I served up pizza, pulling in $30 for a 5-10 shift. It just was…it was over.

I’d begun to feel that way about blogging.

Gone were the days that I could pull up a blank WordPress screen and pour my heart out through my fingertips. Gone were the days when stories flowed. It’d become so much harder. I’d hurt too many, I had to censor myself, I didn’t always have a hilarious spin on shit, because, well, shit isn’t always funny.

I worried I’d become boring – I wasn’t doing much new. I didn’t want to become one of those bloggers who’d been around so long she had nothing else left to say.

And the in the New Blogging World, well, I still don’t fit in. In a space where Tumblr and Pinterest can capture the attention because oooh! shiny! who wanted to read WORDS? LOTS of words! BORING words? Was blogging worth it?

I couldn’t answer that.

I’ve been around long enough to have been able to see the metamorphosis of blogging – people had gone from using blogging as a means to tell stories and keep up with family and begun buying into the business of blogging. While I *do* run a non-profit now, it’s not like sponsors are piling up at my door, knocking themselves over trying to sponsor me. And frankly, I don’t know that I’d want them to, anyway. I like blogging on my terms. I’m beholden to no one but myself and my Pranksters.

But in a world where blogs are now businesses, and the “Word Of Mom,” has become king, where does that leave someone like me? Sure, I sell ads – I have to support the cost of running a non-profit, but I’m still waiting on my yacht or my all-expense paid trip to Detroit or Delaware.

I’ll be waiting a long damn time.

I considered shutting my blog down – I mean, it’s only a matter of time before I reach the end of the Internet – which, I imagine, will look a lot like a ball of hair – and why not quit while the quittin’s good?

I’ve been thinking long and hard about that.

And it came back around to this: I started writing because I needed a place to fit in; a place I could tell my stories, and a place I could make friends and connect with other people. I never expected I’d find a family in my Pranksters. I’d never expected to have a soul read my blog, unless it was some spambot named Robert trying to sell me some quick and easy pay-day loans or enlarge the size of my non-existent penis.

When I began Mommy Wants Vodka, I fit in on the fringes. My very first friends were my baby loss mamas and the infertile community – these two groups understood how it felt to be on the outside looking in. And today, my greatest friends are still from the IF/Loss community. They’ve been the sort of friends who have dusted me off, wiped the vomit off my proverbial chin, and reminded me that sometimes life is a hot bag of dicks.

These two communities are what lead to the embryonic idea behind Band Back Together: it would be a space for the IF/Loss/Special Needs community to get together and share stories – libraries of stories of people who had been through the same problems. In that way, we could be none of us alone.

In turn, I’d use my nursing background to create valuable resources for those who are struggling; to be used as a sort of reference, to learn more.

But being exclusive hurts my vagina, so I opted to invite anyone to share their stories: stories of IF and loss, stories of mental illness and triumph, stories of natural disasters and recovery. YOUR stories. We ALL have a story – it’s up to us to tell it. To reach someone in some far corner of the universe who may find your words and take some comfort that he or she is not, in fact, alone.

The shelves in my online library of stories at Band Back Together have grown and outpaced anything I could dream of. I couldn’t be more proud of The Band and all that we do.

All are, as always, welcome to submit their stories. Even you. Your story is just as important as the next person’s.

Here’s the link to submit to Band Back Together and here is the link to read stories.

But it was thinking back on where I’d come from and where I’d go from here that I was reminded of my roots. How I do have the capacity to simply open up my blog and pour my stories out, whether or not I win fancy awards or get sponsored to visit Texas. How all of that bullshit about ranks and numbers and followers, it’s just that: bullshit.

I still have my words. I’m going to continue to write like no one’s reading.

And as I do that, I’d like to remind you, the Infertile/Loss community, that I’ve never forgotten my roots. June is National Infertility Month, and each month on Band Back Together, we choose to shine the spotlight on a condition (or conditions) that do not receive enough time in the sun.

This month, we’re shining the spotlight directly onto IF/Loss so that we can turn what was once hidden in the dark, back into the light.

I invite you, my Pranksters, to join us in getting the Band Back Together. For infertility. For loss. For ALL of you.

(yes YOU)

So get your leather pants strapped on, and start your storytelling. You never do know who will be touched by your words and be reminded of our mission: we are none of us alone; we are all connected.

It’s safe to say (I think) that I came from an abnormal family. Anyone who writes a blog on the Internet as “Your Aunt Becky” is not exactly someone who you’d hold up as the pinnacle of normal.

My parents, as white-collar hippies didn’t exactly promote the idea of normalcy as something to strive for.

You want to shave half your head and dye your scalp purple? Go for it!

You want to shave your legs in vertical stripes and wear mini-skirts? Why not?

Want to get your belly button pierced at age 14 by some guy in the back of a music store with instruments that were probably NOT sterilized? WHY NOT?

They did draw the line at both tattoos and visible body piercing, for which I am eternally grateful. While wearing an eyebrow ring through the hallowed halls of my high school may have made me stand out from the crowd, ten years later, that pesky hole would drive me bonkers.

Being quirky as an adult is kinda awesome. It means that people who meet you after reading your blog think that you’ll probably de-pants them while eating a hot dog, humping their now-naked leg, while yelling, “EYE OF THE TIGER BABY!” Imagine their surprise when you do neither.

My middle son, Alex, he’s always been a character. He’s the guy who you’ll find hanging out at frat parties, double-fisting cheap keg beer while breaking furniture just to make you laugh. He’s a non-coke addicted Chris Farley in toddler form. At least, I HOPE he’s not addicted to coke – he’s been told “no recreational drugs until he’s twelve,” but you know kids these days.

Anyway. Alex is the epitome of different – he’s quirky and charming.

His Halloween costume for three years running now is a butterfly costume. Why? Because the kid loves butterflies, and why the fuck not?

(no, the wings are not some weird PR stunt – the kid just likes butterflies, and why the fuck not? They’re fucking awesome.)

He’s the first in line to get his nails painted – fingers and toes – and while he’s as rough and tumble as little boys can get, he’s happily in touch with his exuberant side.

Who the shit doesn’t love silver fingernails?

This Friday, on our weekly pilgrimage to The Target, I strong-armed my daughter into picking up some new underwear (she potty trained herself, which just figures). She, being related to me and somehow sensing that my very first training bra was a Wonder Women bra, gravitated toward not Dora. Not Diego. No. BATMAN.

Because obviously.

(I’d totally wear Batman undies if I could find ’em in my size.)

While we were in the undies aisle, I grabbed a couple more packs of undies, including two packs of My Little Pony undies – one for her, one for her brother. I *knew* he’d get a kick out of them.

And he did.

But Sunday morning, he wandered over to me, and asked me in the very serious way in which a five-year old who thinks a lot can, “Mommy, will you kill me if I wear girls underwear?”

My heart dropped a little bit.

I wrapped him in my arms, and said, “No, baby, you wear what you want to wear – just look at your sister!” She stood next to him, adjusting the crotch on her Batman skivvies, the flap that normally covers the twig and crackle-berries sadly vacant, and smiled.

“Alex,” she said. “I love your My Little Ponies underwear.”

And they scampered off, hand in hand, and I sat watching them, hoping the rest of the world will be as kind.

When I moved out to the suburbs back in aught seven (or was it aught six?), I didn’t expect that I’d blend right in. While I do live in the area in which I was raised, being an adult is much different than being a child. Mainly because you have to remember to take out the recycling bins every Tuesday, and who can remember THAT shit?

(answer: The Daver)

I was a young mother. Not like Teen Mom style, but birth-control-fail-whale and happy-twenty-first-enjoy-your-bottle-of-baby-formula, kind of young. In some parts of the country, having a baby at twenty-one is more normal than it is here in Saint Charles, IL (NOT MO). I’ve never been looked down on, per se (unless the person in question was taller than I), but I’m definitely the odd one out when I take my kid to Jr. High orientation, and not just because I’m wearing a shirt that says “HOORAY BEER” on it.

So the house in the suburbs, that seemed pretty okay with me. I mean, it beat Oak (no) Parking, which is so beyond liberal that me and my boring biological child (not a baby I adopted from some exotic country) well, we were breeders. I was never gonna make it there as a parent.

But here in St. Charles, well, people here are NICE. Within five minutes of moving in, two sets of my neighbors had brought over brownies and cookies for us to eat. It was incredible, considering that, in my condo, the last thing I’d gotten on my doorstep was a bag of dogshit.

My neighborhood is so overrun with kids that when mine go out to play, I can barely identify them in the swarming masses of swirling kids clamoring for money for the ice cream man. It’s fucking great. No, seriously, it is.

Until I go and fuck shit up.

Now when I moved in to my house, I hadn’t realized how piss-poor the landscaping job was. It was like the original owners hired landscapers and every owner since just sorta threw up their hands and decided that rather than “maintain the bushes,*” they’d just wallpaper the bathrooms in every possible fug ass pattern. I imagine it went like this:

Old Owner #1: “Man, those bushes need to be trimmed.”

Old Owner #2: “I’m thinking a three swatch pattern for the bathroom. The room’s only 4×2 – that should make the three patterns POP!”

Old Owner #1: “But the shrubbery must be maintained! We cannot see out of the windows!”

Old Owner #2: “You’re right! We should put a faux wood toilet seat on, too!”

Old Owner #1: “But! We look like recluses!”

Old Owner #2: “What do you think of an angel theme?”

It was February of Aught Six when we moved in and I didn’t know anything about the shrubbery except that there were a number of fake flower beds planted in the front of the house. Oh, and the old owners had been kind enough to leave us a hanging basket of fake flowers that looked like it had come over on the Mayflower.

It took walking into my backyard after the snow melted to note that there was, in fact, two gaping holes in the lawn as well as a number of bushes so overgrown I wouldn’t be surprised if we were on the FBI’s watch list.

“The Serial Killer Next Door,” tonight on Fox News Chicago.

(please ensure, Pranksters, that you find the picture of me with a chain saw to accompany that particular news segment. OH! And I want Tori Spelling to play me in my Lifetime Original Movie.)

I applied this bizarre mix of shredded paper and grass seed to the gigantic spots on the lawn, and oddly, grass grew. Apparently, you grow grass by putting newspaper on it. Perhaps print media ISN’T dead!

But the shrubbery? That was a different ballgame. Two years, two busted ankles, a couple of trips to the Serial Killer Section of the hardware store, and eventually, all of the fug ass evergreens were replaced by daintier azaleas and rhododendrons. Flower beds with REAL FLOWERS were planted and sometimes? They even LIVED.

The problem started here:

I bought Mark Zuckerberg.

Yeah, I know, he’s not the ultimate in tacky and he and I aren’t speaking terms because HELLO, he had a wedding and didn’t invite me. HOW DARE YOU, MARK ZUCKERBERG, HOW DARE YOU?

Once I bought Mark Zuckerberg, I realized he needed some friends. Sure, you can’t have a million friends without making some enemies, but I suspect Mark Zuckerberg has very FEW friends.

I introduce to you, The Bros Winkelvoss, or, as I like to call them, The Winkelvii:

Now you may be saying, THAT’S FLAMINGO ABUSE, or, if you’re my mother, “I raised you better than that.”

But what makes these flamingos even awesomer? THEY’RE SOLAR POWERED.

Yes, that’s right – I have light-up flamingos that I named after the ALMOST Founders of The Facebook.

I decided that this wouldn’t do. It simply wouldn’t do. It needed MORE.

It needed THIS:

I’m thinking these may be Tom from MySpace (that dude was EVERYONE’S friend), Justin Timberlake from Napster, and the guy who put together Friendster.

Who doesn’t want a prop-filled backyard filled with Internet People?

Jimmy Wales – you and your eyes that watch me wherever I go, silently judging me for looking up “Why is orange a color and a fruit” on Wikipedia – You’re NEXT.

You’ve been warned.

*giggle-snort

Edited to add: Here is the link to where you, too, can purchase Zombie Gnomes!

P.S. The flamingo one is next.

I’d just sat down to build my 105 floor on Tiny Tower, which I’d planned to name a jaunty “Cyber Sex,” when my kids got home from their grandmother’s. A couple of times a week, they visit my mom’s house, where they happily can eat cereal from plates and annoy my parents with their incessant chattering while I sit at home in my underwear, playing Tiny Tower and watching videos of dancing snails.

My eldest son burst into the house, a whirlwind of knees and elbows, and clomped out to the family room, where I was sitting on my iPad playing a pixelated game and pretending that I wasn’t as lame as, well, I am.

(shut UP)

“MOM,” he yelled. “WE HAVE TO GO TO SCHOOL NOW.”

Um. I’m not wearing pants.

“Why?” I asked, cautiously. There’s something in that child that turns every minor request into an earth-shattering conquest – like we were going to have to climb a mountain, drink our own urine to stay warm, and nosh upon whomever was not up to the challenge in order to get to his elementary school.

“IT’S MY SOLO TONIGHT!” he nearly took my face off with his screams.

Aunt Becky say wha??

That was the first I’d heard of a “solo” a “concert” or a “trip to school after hours.” I try to be up-to-date on all things kids-related, but this child, well, he’s as organized as a, well, okay, he’s not very organized. We’re working on it.

(and by “working on it,” I mean that when he hands me a stack of ancient papers for events we’ve already missed, by hair falls out)

The kid was SOL – Alex has an ear infection, Dave’s out of town, and I, well, I’ve had a migraine that makes me wish I could plunk out my eyeballs with a spoon just to stop them from quivering unpleasantly. The Guy On My Couch was going to have to take over for me for the night – I couldn’t send him to school with the kid, much as I wanted to.

“Sorry, kiddo, but we’re going to have to skip it,” I replied, and before I could continue to explain myself – inserting neatly an object lesson in telling people what you need them to do BEFORE you demand that they drop everything and do it for you – he began to scream.

“BUT MOM, THEY’RE COUNTING ON ME!” The teeth gnashing had begun.

“Ben,” I replied. “We have 14 minutes to get you dressed and ready to leave the house. Do you even know where this concert is?”

“NO,” he said, again yelling my face off. “BUT I GOTTA BE THERE, MOM. I GOTTA.”

The maternal guilt began flowing freely, dripping from both my eyes and ears. I knew it was a lesson he had to learn – had I been given a couple hours to plan, I’d have been able to find someone to take the kid, but with 14 minutes to go? I was fucked.

And OMFWTFBBQ the guilt.

Even now, well after the fact, I’m stewing in a nice puddle of maternal guilt. I WANTED the kid to get there – I wanted to SEE him play his solo. A GOOD mother would’ve made sure her kid got there and I couldn’t do it, therefore, I was clearly NOT a good mother.

To make a long, drawn out, histrionic conversation short, we didn’t go. When I stop feeling like shit about this, I’ll let you know.

I sent his teacher an email, explaining that I was very sorry, that we were all sick, and no one was around to help with Ben’s siblings. The guilt oozed from my fingertips as I wrote it.

After I hit send (carefully removing links to my blog from the bottom of my email signature), the guilt flooded me. I had to watch some Prison Break just to remind myself that I’m not THAT much of a failure. In hindsight, I should’ve watched Jersey Shore –  Michael Scofield would’ve made an elaborate plan including both tattoos, the sun’s gravitational pull, and a single red Twizzler to make sure the kid made his solo WITHOUT being taken out by The Company.

This morning, I awoke to check my email to find she’d written me back, wishing to talk about my son’s future in music with me.

When I stop panicking, I’ll let you know.

I’m a grown-ass woman, and I’m STILL afraid to talk to a teacher about my son’s organizational problems.

If you need me, I’ll be under the bed, sneezing up cat hair and looking for my missing whore pants.

0) Rebranding myself a “social media maven.”

1) Listening to John C. Mayer croon about my body being a wonderland.

1) Decoding passive aggressive Facebook status updates into anagrams about zombies.

2) Finding that bitch Carmen Sandiego.

3) Eating mayonnaise by the spoonful.

5) Trying to figure out why my phones have been tapped.

8) Blogging about my fake dead cat Mr. Sprinkles.

13) Watching a cooking show without rolling my eyes and/or trying to poke out my eyeballs with a spoon.

21) Understanding the origins of the word “teh.”

34) Bathing a light socket with my tongue.

55) Retaking Calc 3.

89) Trying to figure out Pinterest and StumbleUpon

144) Delivering a baby in the back of a moving taxi (or city bus) using only a 12×14 box, a blue felt-tipped pen, and a strawberry Starburst.

233) Dressing in a giant squirrel costume, occasionally throwing myself into the road to signify “roadkill” or “the denigration of society and it’s inhumane treatment of roadkill.”

377) Traveling from office to office delivering singing telegrams to unwitting executives.

610) Becoming an interpretive dancer. See also, “SOMEONE DO A DANCE AS A SALAD! QUICK! YOU’RE THE LETTUCE. NOW YOU’RE THE TOMATO!”

987) Rewatching Season Three of Glee: Who Gives A Shit About Plot? LET’S DANCE, MOTHERFUCKERS!

1597) Listening to anything ever produced by Katy Perry and/or Avril Lavigne.

So what’s new with YOU, Pranksters? TELL ME ALL THE THINGS!