(you know, Dr. Sears?)

When I was in school, I took test-taking Very Seriously. This was extra-hilarious considering I spent most of my actual class time slouched in the back row playing Bejeweled and texting my friends things like, “OH MY FUCKING GOD, my classmates are MOUTH-breathers. Imma go all RAMBO on their asses.” Had The Twitter existed*, I’m confident that I’d have been on there all the time, filling it with my inelegant (rapier) wit.

But the moment A Test was on the horizon (which, in nursing school, was every other day), I was in my element. Synapses firing, notecards flashing, every A beaten by a higher A. I didn’t earn the semi-sarcastic nickname Super Becky Overachiever and draw comparisons to Hermione Granger by getting C’s. Also, if I’d gotten C’s, I’d have been kicked out of the program. Such is nursing school.

Now, just look at where all of those A+++++ have gotten me! I am a BLOBBER, er BLOGGER ON THE INTERNET. I CAN HAZ FREE PUBLISHING?!?

Anyway.

Early Intervention is coming today to reevaluate my daughter’s development. Turns out that tests? Not always so fun.

Here is my representation of how Amelia’s Evaluation will go:

Early Intervention: “So, does Amelia stack six blocks?”

Aunt Becky: “Oh yes. She stacks twenty**.”

Early Intervention: “Does Amelia feed herself with a spoon?”

Aunt Becky: “Amelia wins at spoon feeding! She’s a spoon-feeding CHAMPION!”

Early Intervention: “Does Amelia walk unassisted?”

Aunt Becky: “Amelia RUNS! Like the wiiinnnnnnddddd.”

Early Intervention: “Does Amelia pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and forefinger?”

Aunt Becky: “She can pick up a single grain of sand!”

Early Intervention: “Can Amelia do complex quadratic equations?”

Aunt Becky: “….”

Early Intervention (scribbles on papers triumphantly): “AH-HA! I KNEW IT!”

Aunt Becky: “….”

Early Intervention: “All other babies are doing complex quadratic equations at age two. You should really have been working with her by now. This is probably a result of bad parenting.”

Aunt Becky: “But. BUT! I don’t even KNOW what that IS!”

Early Intervention (writes down): “unfit mother.”

/end scene

Hm. I wonder if I can play the part of Amelia today. Certainly Early Intervention won’t notice if it’s a grown woman pretending to be an almost-two year old.

P.S. I’ll let you know how it goes.

*It may have existed. I don’t know if it existed. I mocked Twitter a lot before I joined it. Which, uh, HUMBLE PIE ANYONE?

**Like I actually know this.

I should probably warn you that surgery is very, very glamorous. Like, I don’t even know how to tell you how glamorous it is to be me right now. You should all be jealous, Pranksters.

I mean, first, I get to use THESE (beloved by old people everywhere):

Oh yeah. FAKE BATH WIPES. I don’t get to take showers yet, so I get to use these bad boys. Get jealous, Pranksters. I smell like AWESOME.

Know why I can’t take showers?

My JP Drains. Even the name “drain” sounds like magic, don’t you agree?

(you do agree, I just know it.)

I’ll spare you the shots of MY drains, suffice to say that they look like aliens exploding from the binder on my chest, should I attempt to cover them up with a shirt. Although, really, why would I want to cover up such awesomeness?

Simple answer, I wouldn’t.

But I am hoping to have the doctor take them out today. I called yesterday about what I thought might be a popped stitch, and he thinks it’s just the nerves waking back up (HELLO HORRIFYING). I’m going in to see him, just to be on the safe side, which means (I hope) GOOD BYE DRAINS.

So tell me, Pranksters, how are YOU today?

Things that are bullshit:

My walls are butt-ugly. I know this because I’ve been staring at them for like 900 hours straight.

I need to call the doctor because I think I popped an internal stitch. I don’t KNOW this, but I think I did. Popping stitches is kinda bullshit.

Bedrest? More bullshit than you’d think. Especially when cockroach-y like myself. I’m sort of unable to move on my own, which sucks, because I AM alone today.

That song “All By Myself” is going through my head. That song is bullshit.

Spell check doesn’t recognize bedrest as a word, which makes me feel invalidated and insecure especially since Spell Check doesn’t think “Rebecca” is a word either, which it SO CLEARLY IS.

I have no Vicodin-Chip cookies because I am too sore to make them.

I found a number of cookbooks in my house when I was purging it. Cookbooks in my house are bullshit because I don’t cook. Especially WILLIAM SONOMA Cookbooks. Who the fuck did I think I was when I bought those? Martha Fucking Stewart?

Silent letters. What. The Fuck?

Things That Are NOT Bullshit:

Adding a silent “balls” to things when they’re awesome. Like silent letters, but better.

MY NEW SHIRTS ARE IN.

VEGAS, baby. December 10-12. I (still) Do is going on at the same time, so I’m joining forces with them so we can properly paint the town many shades of glitter. They’ve secured a block of hotel rooms at the MGM Grand and are having parties. I was just going to try and reenact Fear and Loathing and Las Vegas.

More bloggers means they can bail us out of jail we’re all, THIS HERE IS BAT COUNTRY, Pranksters.

Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups. They’re SO not bullshit.

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS.

How’s that for dramatic? Because I figured I should be dramatic since really, I’ve been doing a whole lot of sitting on my ass since I’ve been here last. Well, okay, TECHNICALLY, I slept some in there, too, but really, I laid on my back and squiggled around like a bug while approximating sleep because frankly, sleeping on your back sucks a fat one. I know people are all breezily like, “sleeping on your back is good for your chi,” or some shit, but so is eating free-range organic pesticide, sweat-shop free paste. And I like Uncrustables.

Shockingly, I am still not running marathons.

Frankly, I’m still not able to take showers. Which means I’m a cockroach that twirls in the air when I’m on my back while smelling bad. Which means that you should come over immediately, if not sooner.

I’m going to the doctor today to hear how I am doing with this whole recovery thing. I’m trying to be a good patient and not be all, ‘Am I better yet?‘ every forty-five seconds to The Daver who is probably ready to set me out with tonight’s garbage. And if he sets me out on my back, see, I can’t get up (read: I am the cockroach in Kafka), so it’s likely they’ll toss me into the dumpster with the landfill-clogging shitty baby diapers.

I haven’t seen them yet, but I now have pictures of my incision. It goes from BEYOND one hip to BEYOND the other. Which? RAD. I have a feeling I will look like a jaunty smiley face when I am done healing.

ALSO? And even more wicked rad?

I HAVE A NEW BELLY BUTTON.

Oh yes, Pranksters, my old saggy belly button that had scars from my multiple piercings? GONE. In it’s place is a new, improved belly button.

I’m going to get a sign that says, “MY BELLY BUTTON BRINGS ALL THE BOYS TO THE YARD.” Because it totally will. Once it’s done being covered in tiny stitches, because right now, I don’t think any boys are going to be all, “damn right, it’s better than hers.” I wonder if my troll who called me navel grazing knew that I might take him so…seriously.

Except no, I don’t care about trolls so much.

But I have to tell you about the ones that were all up in my shit on the Toy With Me article last week. They hurted my feelers and made me sad in the pants. Because, Pranksters, you’ll like this: I got someone who got pretty pissed about it. Now, I was in surgery when the Shit Went Down. When I came out, the last thing I wanted to do was to be all WHAT’S THE INTERNET DOING!?! so I didn’t check until Friday.

On Friday, I saw that while I was under the knife, someone had been being all In My Face over there and THEN, had gone to the trouble of blocking me on The Twitter. Which, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

I’m in surgery, you moron. I’m not getting up to engage in a flame war.

Whatever. Now I’m just all, IS THE RHYTHM REALLY GONNA GET ME LIKE GLORIA ESTEFAN SAID? Because, freaky.

(thanks to my Twitter friend I will later link to for putting that horrid idea in my head)

OH! And I shared an incredibly personal story about antenatal depression, which TOTALLY does not match the tone of this whacked out post here on Postpartum Progress. I wrote it BEFORE I was stoned and on heavy-duty painkillers. Which, heh, yeah. You should read it. It’s important. This post, however, my old ass troll would LOVE.

OMFGBBQ, PRANKSTERS, I MISSED YOU. You don’t even KNOW how much I missed you. I missed you so much that I am actually sitting here, crouched over my computer like a Letter C, in actual pain, because I missed of you and was sad in the pants because I WAS SO VERY ALONE (and lonesome) WITHOUT YOU.

I think that means I’m alive. That, or death looks remarkably like my life.

Since I do not have long in this Letter C position before I pass out from lack of oxygen, I will give you the highlights.

I woke up from The Surgery in the post-op recovery room to someone singing the pina colada sing. If you don’t know it, be glad. (Or, at the very least, know that you’ve probably never sung listened to other people warble bad bar karaoke as much as I have.)

Anyway, I like the song because I am 12 and I have changed the words from, “If you like pina colada’s and dancing in the rain…” to “if you like PENIS COLADA’S and dancing in the rain.” Which is much awesomer, and far more hilarious, BECAUSE GET IT!?! PENIS COLADA!?!

HILARIOUS.

Then I was all, “So, what did the surgeon say?” because frankly, who doesn’t want to know how their motherfucking surgery went? And the nurse was all, “you’ve asked me that four times” like I was an asshole idiot for not remembering that. I mean, hi, POST-OP RECOVERY ROOM. She should have been glad I wasn’t flinging my shit around. Ass.

Still, no one told me about my surgery. For all I knew, I could have gotten a nose job instead. Which I hadn’t wanted.

So, finally, they moved me to my floor, where Dave told me that the surgery went well. I don’t know what that means, suffice to say that they took off 6 pounds of crap, moved a bunch of muscles around and gave me morphine through a button that I could press whenever I wanted. That was more than “well,” but you know.

THEN, I got my roommate. Pranksters, she needed a taco kick because apparently, she’d never heard of the concept of an “inside voice” or “personal space.” The moment I arrived, she began to shriek. Not like, in anguish, just like her normal speaking tone. Bitch couldn’t fucking shut her whore mouth. For four hours. At one point, she was arguing with her mother, talking on the phone AND watching television while inviting her husband to bring her food. At 8 PM. I’d been trying to nap off the surgery for that entire time to no avail. She had no medical reason to be there other than she seemed to enjoy the attention.

It was then when I informed the staff that one of us would be moving.

I must have looked serious because they moved her right away.

Anyway.

I’m home now and while I’d like to say that laying around and recovering is full of the awesome, I’m kind of bored. Also: in some pretty bad pain. I’d describe what I’ve been doing, but primarily it involves “sitting on the couch,” “peeing” and “laying down.” If I had wet paint, I’d be watching it dry. If there was grass growing, I’d be watching that, too.

I’m wearing a binder, which means I can’t eat, which also explains why those ladies in the 1900’s were skinny. Binders = corsets = HOLY SHIT, NO ROOM IN THE INN.

Also, I feel like a cockroach. You never realize how much you use your abs for until they’re all “peace out, asswipe.” If I’m stuck in bed, I’m still stuck there until I’m later retrieved. It’s pretty good punishment, I guess.

Now I’m left to moulder on the couch and debate the true question of the ages: who sang the better version of “Hair of the Dog?”

So, I’m all, ‘DAWN, I dunno what I want,” when I went into my tattoo appointment, and because she knows me, when I said, “just draw my soul,” she laughed because I was kidding and sketched some stuff on my arm. THAT, Pranksters, is how you know you have a fucking awesome tattoo artist. For SERIOUS.

Anyway.

Scroll to the previous post if you want to see the “before” snaps, because I don’t want to put the pictures up again when you’ll be all SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET TO THE NEW SHIT, AUNT BECKY.

This, Pranksters, this is the “after” (until I go back in a couple months for the clouds below it. EVENTUALLY, I want to do a sun, but I think I need to wait for the sun)(GOD that sounded convoluted):

And for those of you *ahem* ZOMBIE JULE, who have asked me where the Phoenix’s head is, I have included a diagram:

(yeah, sorry about the boobs. I’m not a big “show us your tits” person, because, uh, I dunno why)

Also, if you look closely, you can see that I bleed RED, not green. So I’m not a damn reptile. SEE?

Anyone who wants a better angle better get their butts over to my house with a bottle of narcotic pain killers and a econo-vat of vasoline.

P.S. Please?

After spending most of the day imagining many adventures where Mr. Pinchey, my imaginary Monkey Butler and I rode horses through the Australian Outback looking for pirated treasure and eventually roasted some shrimp on the barbie, I got down to some serious thinking. After, of course, I ate a hot dog. Mr. Pinchey stories always makes me hungry.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why we blog.

As my friend Cecily recently pointed out, a lot has changed in the time since we dinosaurs started our dinky blogs. I mean, when I started, WordPress (which I think was Typepad back then) didn’t even have a spell-check feature–which explains the abysmal spelling of many of my imported posts–it had a “BOLD,” “ITALICS” and “STRIKE-THROUGH” button at the top of the post. That’s it.

I started to blog on Mushroom Printing because, as I’ve said many times, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I began Mommy Wants Vodka because I needed a space where I could let it all out. Mushroom Printing was supposed to be a humor blog and once Alex was born, I needed a space where I could talk about my kid, too. Somewhere that I could be Becky, In Real Life, not just Becky, The Motherfucking Clown.

I kept on blogging because I’m a compulsive freak who has to do the same thing every day, lest my brain explode into a pulpy, spattery mass, and I’ve watched as bloggers come and go. Some of them good, some of them great, some of them terrible. I’ve added and deleted links from my blogroll, mourning the dead blogs of my friends while I happily added new ones.

But last night, as I read what Cecily wrote, I found myself nodding along, because she’s right. Memoir-style blogging, blogging where we bare our soul and tell stories and let our ugly warts hang out for the world to see, these blogs seem to be dying.

Instead, I find new blogs (not yours, Pranksters) that present a sanitized version of life, a Palmolive commercial, if I may (and I always may, because this is my blog and I am sponsored by myself and the pennies I find in the couch cushions). Life is good, children are adorable, and wouldn’t you know it, gosh-darnit, Jim, my darling-hubby is just the cutest darn guy on the planet!!!

I get it. I do.

Bloggers don’t want to bare themselves or open themselves up to criticism or scare off potential companies who will be all, “wow, this blogger says, ‘fucking shit,’ we’d better not pay her a boat-load of cash to shill our crappy product!” They don’t want to embarrass their children or spouses by telling the world that hey, you know what? SOMETIMES MY KIDS SUCK, TOO. SOMETIMES, I HATE MY SPOUSE. They don’t want to blog their life as it really is for whatever reason. I get it.

But in turn, that dehumanizes the blog, makes everyone seem like beige paint, and makes me, quite frankly, bored. If I want to watch a commercial about how life is supposed to be, I’ll turn on the television and watch it. I know how my life doesn’t stack up by comparison to the sunny television kitchens, and I don’t care.

I love my imperfect life. Maybe not every single day, but most days, I do. My imperfections are what make me human, and being able to come here every day and be honest about them is why 6 years later, I can still do it.

I don’t make much money off my blog. I’m not sponsored by Colgate or Crest or Palmolive, or even a vodka company. I run ads so that I can pay for hosting for this blog and Mushroom Printing. If I had to change who I was to be more popular or become “Mommy Wants Vodka by…xxxx Big Company,” I wouldn’t do it. Because that’s not me.

I’m ugly in the mornings. I don’t always say the right things. My entries are too long and not always edited and I can’t spell to save myself. I swear. A lot. I’m unapologetically who I am. You probably won’t always like me. I’ll probably always like you.

If I can offer new bloggers one piece of advice it’s this: write hard. Be authentic. Write because you can’t imagine not writing. Write because those beautiful words get stuck in your head like butterflies beating against your skull until you let them out and BAM! there they are on paper, in front of you and it’s perfection.

Even if you’re the only one who reads it: write hard. Do it for yourself. Don’t ever doubt that you can do it or that you should do it. Just do it and stop second guessing. Second guessing is for amateurs and punks.

Write hard, my Pranksters.

—————–

So, why do you blog, Pranksters? Alternately, why don’t you? I’m throwing up a Mr. Linky if you want to answer on your own site.

One of the first things my friend Ashely said when I started to date someone new was, “Has he seen a full-on Becky outfit?” She wasn’t trying to be mean, just curious at how a guy would take my funky sort of “did she get dressed in a dark closet and intentionally go out looking that way?” sort of style. Part of the problem is that I’m colorblind. The other part of the problem is that I’m unabashedly tacky.

So you know when bloggers do style blogs and they’re all “these are my favorite things” and you’re all “holy shit that’s awesome” because it’s awesome and you realize you have no style and/or no money with which to buy style? This is pretty much the reverse of that. This blog should make you feel like you’re the most stylish person on the planet.

Exhibit One: My Belt

That’s right, Pranksters, a belt with my motherfucking NAME on it. Why? Because I can. And do! It’s a multi-purpose belt, really, because not only does it announce to the world, “Hey World, I have a name,” IT TELLS THE WORLD WHAT MY NAME IS! Then, when I forget my name, all I have to do is look down and BOOM, THERE IT IS. (kinda like WHOOMP, THERE IT IS, but not).

The only thing that would make this gem of a belt better would be if it were encrusted with bling.

(bonus points when I give it to people to wear who are NOT named Becky because it’s just hilarious because OBVIOUSLY).

Exhibit Two: My Hat.

We all know that I might aim a little higher than I should when it comes to the men I date in my head and nowhere is that more evident than my Mrs. Timberlake hat.

In hindsight, I think I’ll get my next one to read: “MRS. DEXTER MORGAN” because I think I find the concept of being married to a serial killer more appealing than being married to a former boy-bander. Either way, the hat, it’s hot. You know you want it AND YOU KNOW YOU CAN’T HANDLE IT.

P.S. Maybe I could have gone TANNING before I got this picture taken. I’m pretty much Edward Cullen’s relative without the sparkle.

Mimi couldn’t handle the greatness of the hat, see?

She had to take it off before the AWESOMENESS of it burned her.

Exhibit Three: My TELEPHONE

Hello hello baby you called I can’t hear a thing I have got no service in the club, you say? say? Wha-Wha-What did you say, oh, you’re breaking up on me. Sorry, I cannot hear you I’m kinda busy.

Actually, I wasn’t ka-kinda busy (yes I was), it’s just that my crystal-coated cellphone had a tendency to drop calls almost as much as my iPhone does. But do you see the looping, poorly executed “B” on there? Oh yeah, that’s right Pranksters, Your Aunt Becky did that. Badly, even. This right here is evidence of why you should never do yourself what you can pay someone else to do for you.

Gluing a gazillion tiny crystals onto a cellphone in a pattern that can only be described as “pathetic” isn’t something that I would recommend, even if the glue did give me a wicked high. But oh, how I loved on that phone. The crystals added a good five pounds to an already ridiculously heavy phone (you had that phone too, I know, because EVERYONE did) and they flaked off, leaving an odd Cinderella-style trail of pink crystals back to wherever I was, and they messed with the reception and my ability to make and receive phone calls, but I didn’t care.

Because that phone was where the MAGIC HAPPENED. PRETTY PRINCESS CRYSTAL SPARKLE UNICORN MAGIC!! Just as soon as I get my new iPhone and find someone who can properly bling it out, you bet your ASS Imma do it.

So there you have it, Pranksters. Several of the things in my closet that will never find their way into YOUR closet because you are FAR more tasteful and refined than I’ll ever be. Because OBVIOUSLY.

———————-

The contest to win the Flip MinoHD is on until Saturday and can be found here, under my TOP SECRET PAGES.

Today, over at Toy With Me, it’s my second installment of my Bondage Conference! Part One! Part Two!

4: approximate weeks until my cruise

12.8: times each day The Daver references my cruise by saying “well, I don’t know what I am going to DO without you for those 5 days!”

90: times a year that Dave mentions that he’d be “just fine” if left as a stay-at-home parent.

90: times I roll my eyes when he says that because brother, he’s talking out of his asshole.

0: times a day I plan to call and check in with him from the cruise to hear, “pant, pant, pant *crash* THESE KIDS ARE INSANE! PLEASE COME HOME, I WILL CALL THE COAST GUARD NOW.”

0: idea of where this cruise is going because frankly, big boat in the middle of the ocean where I can pee alone (but probably not IN the ocean)? Doesn’t matter where the hell we’re going.

7: bushes I pulled out yesterday (from a view that I didn’t even show you), thereby rendering me unable to move today without swearing wildly.

68: times my son has said, “OUCH, SHIT” when he moved, just repeating what I’ve said.

68: times I’ve wondered if I should probably cut out my tongue.

12,000,000: times I said, “I. Fucking. Hate. Bushes.” in my best Clint Eastwood voice, which, let’s be honest, isn’t very good.

87: times I cursed the previous, PREVIOUS owners of my house for loving both bushes and wallpaper. Fucking wallpaper.

3: times a day I have to put eye ointment into my poo-eating dog’s eyes.

16: pounds my poo-eating dog weighs

2-3: people it takes to restrain my poo-eating dog in order to put the ointment in his eyes

.2 million: times I’ve wondered if my poo-eating dog was actually a mutant Incredible Hulk dog.

0: times I have eaten beef sticks, even though they are technically encased meats (which I adore).

90,093: times Daver has eaten beef sticks.

84: times I have gagged, thinking about Daver eating beef sticks.

2: times I have enjoyed American Idol this season

infinity: amount of love I have for Glee, even though the show contains NONE of my boyfriends.

4: current television husbands.

infinity: dorkiness quotient I will achieve after going to the Glee concert (oh yes, yes I am).

0: likelihood of Daver eating beef sticks at a Glee concert.

0: likelihood of me caring about American Idol, even though one of my husbands was on that show.

0: likelihood that I will ever learn how to properly use a comma or apostrophe.

12.8 million: likelihood that you will go read this, my post about the Grand Gesture guy.

In a stunning fit of gracefulness, when I was about 5 weeks pregnant with Amelia I fell down the stairs. That sounds awfully dramatic, doesn’t it? Like I’m being all euphemistic about what happened or something, because by “falling down the stairs” I actually meant that Dave pushed me, or I threw myself, or something equally dramatical.

Alas, no, I am just that clumsy. One look at The Daver would tell you that I really did fall down the stairs. At least, the bottom two.

In doing so, I severely twisted my left foot, and landed myself firmly in the ER, where a puzzled doctor took one look at my purpled and ballooning foot and back at the X-ray and said, “well somehow you didn’t break anything.” Having heard a definite *SNAP* I wasn’t exactly sure about that, but the films showed that my metatarsals were actually intact.

I left in an air cast, ace bandage orders for PRN Tylenol (which, okay, LAUGH because that’s oh-so-effective) and strict orders for elevation and rest. When I stopped laughing because I had a one year old at home who didn’t stop moving, I went home to my highly-annoyed-at-his-clumsy-wife-husband.

I dutifully wore the cast, and was not entirely shocked that with the pregnancy fuck-ton weight gain it didn’t get any better. Finally, I did what I should have done all along–I went to an orthopedic surgeon.

She took a look at the long bones in my foot, manipulated them around, clucked at the X-rays disapprovingly, manipulated my foot again until I cried, and then said, “Well, I’d LIKE to do some more X-rays and an MRI…BUT you’re pregnant. So we can’t do anything. Fractures of the long bones of the feet don’t often show up until days or weeks later.”

She then disappeared for a couple of moments and came back happily with a gigantic black thing which she handed to me.

“Meet your newest shoe!”

For the remainder of my pregnancy I was instructed to wear Das Boot.

It’s like the ugliest thing ever, but I’ll be dipped in dogshit if it’s not the most comfortable thing when your metatarsals are busted and all you can take is motherfucking TYLENOL.

So Das Boot and I were BFF while I was pregnant. We went everywhere together, and let me tell you how people STARED at us. Also, the minute you have a gigantic baby in your belly and a gigantic boot on your foot people assume that you’re pretty much the stupidest person on the planet.

Suddenly, when I was at the store, people would talk to me loudly and slowly as though I couldn’t possibly understand anything at a normal rate. They’d walk behind me so closely and that I’d swear they were auditioning for the role of My Hemorrhoid, but then act furious that I wasn’t walking faster, even though they could have easily skirted around me. I’d get jacked for my place in line, pushed out of the way when I was standing somewhere, and generally shit on.

It was like wearing Das Boot gave other people the right to be an asshole to me.

Pretty sure I scared a good part of the population of St. Charles (and the tri-cities) into being kinder to those with disabilities because anyone who fucked with me heard about it. You don’t fuck with me because you see Das Boot? Das Boot can kick your fucking ass. And if it doesn’t Aunt fucking BECKY will.

Anyway.

So, my foot has been better since I popped Mimi from my nether regions and Das Boot waits in my closet for…something.

Last year, in a fit of masochism I bought the 30 Day Shred, and let it gather dust in my basement. I figured that I might SCARE the rest of the baby weight off by just showing that I’d bought that wretched DVD.

It didn’t work.

So, finally last week, I broke the shrink wrap and popped it into the DVD player; terrified that Jillian Michaels was going to jump out of my TV and call me a fat fucking bitch. Shockingly…she’s cute as a button and the workout is awesome. But remember before you start throwing things at your monitor, that I’m the same person who is planning to learn to SERIOUSLY box and is looking for a local Roller Derby to join.

I’ll admit it, I’m kind of an endorphin junkie, so getting all hopped up on a workout that makes me feel like I’m going to vomit and/or die and then realizing that I didn’t actually die, well, that’s fucking amazing. I thrive on that shit.

But the problem is, it irritates my foot where the fracture didn’t quite heal properly and that makes me Furious George because I can’t go all balls to the wall like I want to. I have to ease into it, and if there’s anything that makes me annoyed, it’s easing into things.

Also things that make me annoyed: being told “no,” Paypal, slippers, reading maps, people who use inspirational quotes without laughing, the color orange, hair product, anything Hallmark, gravity, people who make an “aaaah” noise after they drink, and brass.

Why don’t you gather ’round, Pranksters, and tell Your (gimpy) Aunt Becky what annoys you?