I read an article recently about how passing the blame was contagious. The article sited a couple of boring studies where people were told some stuff which I’d recount for you but it was BORING so I stopped paying any attention because HELLO, I’m not being TESTED on this stuff any more because I am an adult and not in school.

I can only imagine that it’s no one’s fault that my mailbox now looks like this:

Perhaps it was an act of GOD that sheared the mailbox from it’s wee little mailbox perch atop that piece of wood where it has happily lived for well over 5 years. Because clearly, no one else is to blame. Certainly not a snow plow.

This, my friends, is a Mail Box FAIL.

I still snicker every time I see it because it’s really funny. Trashy, but funny. Nothing to be done about it until the ground dries out, though. I’m sure my neighbors are thrilled. It sure adds something to the neighborhood.

ANYWAY.

I don’t know quite how to thank you for this, but last night I was roused from my near-catatonic state on the couch to be informed by my friend on Facebook (who shall remain nameless because I don’t that she wants me to shout her name out here) I have actually made it to Bloggie nominations and am on the ballot for Best Humor Blog.

Seriously, you guys, THANK YOU.

I know that you did it, because I voted for myself exactly once because I was all *scoff* “YEAH RIGHT, LIKE I COULD GET A BLOGGIE NOMINATION.” So I pretty much shit myself when I saw that I was on the ballot.

I’ll never make it, which isn’t something I’m saying to be coy or shy, but because my competition is miles beyond me.

Let me put it this way: if each of you told every single person YOU knew to vote for me, I’d still not win because I am up against the greats. And that? I am completely okay with. Because when I lose I will be all “awesome, I lost to xxxx, and I respect them.” It doesn’t mean I won’t beg you to vote for me because that’s the kind of bitch I am, but you know, I won’t expect to win. There’s simply NO WAY.

But my name is on the ballot and I am shocked and honored and this is me loving on you up and down and left and right. Thank you.

Marry me?

(I am pretty sure that you guys built The Daver up so thoroughly that he’s going to be fighting me tooth and nail to guest post on my blog. Which, hi, AWESOME. Except he’s WAY NICER than I am, so there’s that. Maybe I’ll make him blog on Saturdays for me after he’s done rubbing my feet and giving me a manicure and washing the floor with his tongue except OH WAIT HAHAHAHAHA!

That’s right, he barely posts on HIS BLOG!

If you bug him enough, maybe he’ll post here.)

Christmas in my house growing up was always a pretty understated affair. A simple candle in each window, popcorn and cranberries hung on the tree and tasteful ornaments hung just-so on the freshly-chopped-down-ourselves tree. It drove me bonkers.

If I’d had it my way, Christmas would have vomited all over my house, spewing tinsel and garland from floor to ceiling, the more, the tackier, the blinkier, the better. I admired the displays in the stores with something akin to lust as my mother pulled me through, always calling my choices “tacky.”

The one year that I saved up my allowance, snuck off to the store and bought tinsel to decorate the tree with overnight, she was FURIOUS. Partially because it was “hideous” but mainly because our stupid cats ate the tinsel and dragged cat turds around the house dangling from their buttholes like homemade garland.

It was fucking hilarious.

Watching her chase our indignant and semi-retarded cats around the house pulling those strands of poo garland out of their poo holes, man, that was comedy gold. Consider that mental picture my Hanukkah gift to YOU.

As I got older and started to have to decorate for Christmas ourselves, we’ve toed the line between broke-as-shit and we-don’t-give-a-shit. I’m not a huge holiday decorator anyway, because that would imply that I’m some sort of decorator in the first place, which is something I’m going to have to eventually hire someone for. I have no eye. I’ll have to pay to use another person’s eye.

We’ve always done two trees, though.

My sweet Blue Christmas Tree that they will have to pry out of my cold, dead hands. I got it from my sister-in-law’s mother, and it’s a vintage aluminum white tree. Fuck to the YES:

And then your standard fresh Christmas tree with the hokey ornaments. Generally without garland and always with the garish plastic balls. We have small kids, puppies and, well, The Daver. OBVIOUSLY. I’m pretty okay with fake everything else (read: boob job) but I’m insistent on the real tree.

This year we also have Mimi, who is a crawling machine that likes to chew on everything from dog food to batteries and, well, we decided that maybe a real tree or a tree that was made in 1960 was perhaps a bad idea.

I considered trying to put one of my orchids on the floor, but then realized that no one was going to sing, O! Christmas Orchid and besides, I love my orchids too much to put them on the floor. I DO have priorities. Then I thought that maybe I could dress up one of the kids as a tree and they could rotate who had to Play Tree today, but I realized that that was probably torturing them more than was necessary, so I scrapped that idea too.

Eventually, Dave and I came to the conclusion that the only way to do this was to buy another fake tree that wasn’t dripping with lead paint and other combustible radioactive bits for our baby to eat. So we did. We bought a cheap fake tree and all the garland I could find (except that I totally didn’t buy enough*) as well as some glittery snowflakes that didn’t require those metal hooks that were certain to pierce my daughter’s colon after she ate them.

The final result, well let’s just say that no drag queen will ever speak to me again, but my younger self is beaming proudly:

My children had a freaking BLAST decorating it, and what you cannot see is my daughter climbing around underneath it like a monkey. She was probably looking for an electrical cord to munch on or some plutonium to make a bomb from. 1.21 GIGWATTS! **

Better than the tree, though, is wrapping paper. New parents, HEED MY WORDS, AND HEED THEM WELL: IF YOU WANT TO BUY TOYS FOR YOUR CHILDREN, GO AHEAD, BUT THEY ARE MOSTLY FOR YOU. CHILDREN PLAY WITH RANDOM THINGS.

For example, rather than toys, my children will be seen playing happily with:

*Red Solo Cups, like you paid $5 at keggers. Yes. A bag of those.

*A Bag Of Straws (not even the wrapped ones!)

*Wrapping Paper (and not even the fancy ornamental pretty stuff!)

Yes, I know, Aunt Becky just ruined your Christmas. Sorry. You can return those gifts and buy yourself stuff. Or better yet, send ME the money! YAY!

Amelia says, “Mom, if that’s so true, why the hell do you have a stockpile of crap for us upstairs?”

THAT DAMN BABY IS A MIND READER.

*math is hard

**WTF am I talking about?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and use a word that almost always makes me shiver with disgust, but for purposes of this statement, I think it fits: sales make me moist.

The word moist, however, makes me sort of want to die, but that is neither here nor there.

But sales, man, SALES.

I’ve gotten back into coupon clipping, thanks to reading something about it on my friend TJ’s blog after a stint away from it because that does take a little more brain power than blearily stumbling to the store and throwing things into a cart requires. But I’ve also realized that holy shit, there’s a whole THING behind that and wow, I’m not THAT good or devoted (but please, pepper me with your tips, o! Internet my Internet).

Couponing, I think it’s called, seems sort of like a sport and I get that.

Sales, man, that’s where I get off.

Unless, of course, it’s the Black Friday sales, where you’ll find me cowering at my house, as far away from the stores as I humanly can be. Tonight, I’ll venture out to Target, My Home Away From Home and see if I can pick through what is left of the carnage left in the wake of this morning’s mayhem and destruction. I’ll smile knowingly at the glassy-eyed employees and pat them on the back if they don’t flinch when I get too close, and I’ll whisper, “I was a waitress, I GET IT.”

Because I do. Sort of.

I know that a lot of people turn it into a game, a hunt, carefully choosing their morning path, gathering up sleeping bags and going out the night before to camp out in front of the store so as to be the first in line for that $100 flat screen television. I’m sure that battle lines are drawn and should anyone dare cut in line or attempt to push ahead, there would be brawls and blows to the face.

But I wouldn’t know about that because my dimply butt was fast asleep in bed, dreaming of cheesecake and turkey and shopping the Black Friday deals online. I’ve never been out to a Black Friday sale in the wee hours of the morning and I have no intentions of ever doing so.

It’s not because I don’t like sales or because I don’t like competition, because, Internet, you know me and I like both. But I can see myself conforming to mob mentality and fighting some bearded 50-year old woman for a pair of 0.00000001 carat diamond earrings set in lead just because everyone else wanted them.

Or maybe getting into a heated fight between some bar owner over a set of naked lady bar glasses/popcorn maker not because I have ANY use for them, but because at $100, WHAT A STEAL! And what family with two boys and one small baby girl doesn’t need to see comically large nipples while they drink their juice every morning?

I could see myself filling up my truck with my junk, not thinking twice about plunking down for a Miley Cyrus Ultimate Dance Party Karaoke Revolution because I could, a cultured set of fresh water pearls even though I am not 97 years old, 483 DVD players for all of those DVD’s we’re switching over to Blu-Ray, and the Kate Gosslin cookbook JUST BECAUSE.

So it’s a good thing that my chubby self stays home and in bed, surfing for donkey porn and deals on Amazon.com. The Internet, it just got more beautiful than ever.

Except for that whole donkey porn thing.

*shudders*

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Since I never worked retail, I’m living vicariously through you, The Internet. I’m in dire need of some Black Friday stories from the retail side of it or the shopping side of it.

2,869: Twitter Followers that follow me.

2,800: Twitter Followers that make wonder why SHIT they want to follow me. As proof, I give you an actual tweet that I tweeted last night: “I’m writing about all of the things I would do if I had a penis.” I am not classy.

5: Days I have currently been too sick to even moan about the house moping to angle for awesome presents and/or compliments.

100: Degrees of fever, which is apparently not high enough to warrant Tamiflu.

INFINITY: the amount of pain and suffering that my fever feels knowing that it is NOT FUCKING GOOD ENOUGH.

34: times my fever has wondered if it can go to the People’s Court to sue for pain and suffering for knowing it’s NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

0.4: seconds it takes for my daughter to move from my arms to stuffing her chipmunk cheeks like a squirrel with dog food across the house.

INFINITY TIMES TWO: how gleeful she is about playing in the dog water before I swoop her up because she knows she’s not supposed to be splashing in there.

12,000: decibels that Dave manages to chew potato chips, burrowing into my aching head like a sea of mini jackhammers with each.and.every.single.crunch.

87: times I wondered if I could sue pigs or whatever for the swine flu.

87: times I wondered if that could be a People’s Court episode.

42: times I thought that the pig appearing as the defendant had to be wearing loads of gold medallions

14: times I’ve thought about writing and rapping a hardcore gangsta rap album this week under the name The Notorious B.E.X.

Want to be my back up singers?

• I am pretty sure that showing remarkable restraint by waiting until ALMOST like, the last week of September to listen to Christmas music makes me Super Awesome.
• That fact alone nearly negates the dorkiness that I love Christmas music like it was my job.
• And no, I do NOT own any gaily decorated, bedazzled Christmas sweaters with any of these: rhinestones, pearls, dancing snowmen, bells, Christmas trees, snowflakes, or whimsical gingerbread men.
• Also, no matter how it now sounds I am not a crazy cat lady.
• My cats, while they are still walking around and not being turned into coats for very small people for waking up the baby AGAIN, are named “Charlotte” and “Peekachoo.” I named neither. But if I had, they wouldn’t have been “Snooky” or “Mr. Snugglesworth.” They would have been, “Vlad the Impaler” and uh, “Chuck.”
• Okay, so the last cat that I did name was “Little Cat” because, well, she was a little cat, but she was a foster cat and I barely saw her anyway. I think that such a pathetically stupid name helped further her adoption process along anyway.
• Sometimes I miss fostering cats until I remember that Little Cat brought us all giardia parasite that she ejected from her butthole at the exact same time that I brought us all home a crotch parasite that I ejected from my lady bits. Then I don’t miss fostering cats any more.
• That’s sort of how I feel about my stats program.
• I can no longer laugh at all of the weird ass searches that bring people here, but then I don’t have to look at all of the sick Uncle Pervy crap that people search for and bathe in bleach and wish that I could somehow scour my eyeballs.
• I am alternating between being thrilled that tonight is Glee Night, which, dude, on a scale of one to awesome, that show is super great, and being in full out dread mode, because today is also Dosage Increase day for my Topamax.
• On a scale of one to lousy, that is super craptacular because I will be sick for the next 4 days.
• I sometimes worry that I will become one of those insufferable people who thinks that the entire world is fantastically interested in the most mundane symptoms of an illness.
• Maybe I should start sending out press releases to my imaginary legions of fans describing in minute detail how I feel every hour, rather than putting together a power-point for the holidays. I just KNOW my family wants to hear about it.
• I have been informed that if I want to make my blog more PR friendly, I should refrain from using colorful language, especially the eff word.
• I have some of my own words to say about that.
• Fuck, shit, cock-bag, motherfucking, asshole, bitch, shithead, fuck-wad, dick, meat curtains, ass-bag. Oh, and fuck.
• I trust PR driven blogs ALMOST as much as I trust that the people on television who tell me that that their product really!! works!!! have MY best interest in mind.
• Pretty sure that’s how to lose advertisers and not influence people.
• Anyway. LOOK! My daughter is giving me the stink eye so YOU DON’T HAVE TO:

• What’s on YOUR mind today?

It seems only fitting that, like the dead horse this is, the first article I was actually INTERVIEWED for–about Drinking Moms (WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!*) would have aired yesterday, when I was working on the post about using–and abusing–prescription drugs.

Here is the link.

And here is the guest post that I wrote for The Drinking Diaries. I am very, very, very proud of it, but since I didn’t know it was going to put up until right now, I will re-run it later in the week here.

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My Dearest Topamax,

I can call you Topamax, right? I know that technically I know you as Topiramate, but that simply doesn’t roll off the tongue with the same lilting lift as “Topamax” does, so we’ll just pretend.

Shh, baby, don’t be like that. It’s the insurance companies coming between us, that’s all.

Because for you, I would do anything. ANYTHING.

Until you, I was in a bad place, Topamax, see, I had a headache for 5 whole months. Maybe even 6. Now, wipe that look off your face, Mister, don’t you be acting like you don’t believe me. I don’t have secrets from you. WHY WOULD I LIE?

Shh, there, there. I’m sorry, baby, I didn’t mean to shout, I’m just tired of people giving me that look. That look that says, “I don’t BELIEVE you.” That look that says, “how could any SANE person last for 5 whole months with a splitting headache?” That look that says, “Bitch, you be looking for my sympathy AND my Vicodin.”

While it’s true, I WOULD take Vicodin over pretty much anything, including (but never limited to): vodka, whiskey, diet Coke (*sobs*), food, water, air, my dogs, my cats, and Dr. House, I’m pretty sure you, Topamax, kick his pasty ass squarely out of bed on his chalky, addictive ass.

Now, sure, your side effects are, well, I don’t know how to put this delicately, so I’ll just be out with it: they suck.

My friends on Twitter warned me so, my friends on Facebook pleaded with me to take care (ed note: how the hell did I function before my friends in the computer could tell me important stuff I wouldn’t otherwise know?) so I knew after popping the first of the delightfully teeny-tiny pills that I was in for a doozy of a ride.

First to go was my beloved diet Coke, but for you, Topamax, o! love of my life, anything, even the first love of my life. Honestly, I didn’t mind. If you rid me of my evil demon headaches, I wouldn’t mind if you turned my arms purple and green spotted. Priorities, people.

And, Topamax, please don’t tell anyone, especially that hateful bitch Imatrex, but I’m pretty sure that I’m pregnant with your baby because I am rife with the morning sickness and the nausea. I’d be stuffing my urpy face with saltines if my chemically exhausted butt wasn’t glued to the couch, so instead I moan pitifully at passersby. Like my children. Who are now so sick of me that they’re regularly petitioning for a new mother.

(can you blame them? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!)

This is chemical nausea, so I know better to pee on any sticks, so we’ll keep this between me, you and The Internet, but secretly, I’m thrilled. This is the only pregnancy with which I may actually lose weight instead of grow to water buffalo dimensions! The downside is, of course, chemical nausea which is very different than pregnancy nausea, but shh, honey, it’s okay, Momma still loves you best.

Because with you, my headaches, which have plagued me, making me wonder if maybe, just maybe I was slowly going mad(der), have slowly dissipated. They’re not gone, no, but they’re going. Which is more than that stupid whore Robaxin could ever have claimed to have done for me.

With you, Topamax, I may not be able to drink any longer. Maybe I can’t drive or operate heavy machinery. I may no longer be able to remember the words for certain things, but, between you and I, let’s face it, I couldn’t have done it before, either.

I may suffer morning sickness without the hint of a crotch parasite and vomit at the sound of mac-n-cheese being stirred in a pot. I may be the only un-pregnant, pregnant woman who loses 60 pounds (God willing) by eating approximately 8 calories a day, but I don’t care.

You, my sweet, sweet drug, are worth every blood draw, every dry heave, and every tingly extremity.

Always and forever, or at least until my body goes into toxicity and my organs shut down,

Aunt Becky

*You can quote me. OR Maude Flanders, which is who I am shamefully zoinking this from. But I’m pretty sure she’s a cartoon character who was killed off, so we’re probably all good.

Why NO, I didn’t make that cuppy-cake. Of course I did not. Because if I had, it would not have been a) symmetrical or 2) frosting-ed. I am many, many things, none of which springs to mind is “aesthetically oriented.”

But that picture is important, not because it clearly shows my bully-ness as I am taunting my son with a cuppy-cake, because not two seconds after this shot, I gave him the delicious slice ‘o’ heaven, but because it fully solidifies that he is my son.

Historically, Alex has eschewed anything cake-related in favor of gnawing on, well, anything else, including, but not limited to edamame and well, lately, air. But now, NOW he sees that cake is next to godliness and occasionally allows me to ply him with sugary, springy goodness.

Anyway.

I was going to come here and whine to you about my My Grains. Give you a list of my symptoms and complain bitterly about what a pain in the pooper it is to find a cure for something that could be caused by, well, anything.

It would have been a rousing, self-serving, irritating post, full of long-winded descriptions of each of my symptoms, along with their possible causes, the likes of which, along with discussions of my recent colonoscopies are better suited for Thanksgiving Dinner Table Discussions (don’t all clamor to thank me at once, those of you who will, no doubt, be stuck with me at Thanksgiving).

I decided against it.

It served no purpose, this post I’d half written, other than to prune down my readership and annoy me later when I realized what a sniveling baby I was being. I have nasty migraines and they suck and 50 million red fire ants don’t give a shit.

So today, armed with my Topamax and Vicodin (which, squee!), I am going on a mission. No, thankfully not Mission: Manband.

I am dragging The Daver out to make a care package for my friend Heather, who is pregnant and sick as fuck. You, of course, know Heather and Maddie and Mike and Binky. If you do not, I’ll give you a moment to go and catch up and come back.

HEATHER, GO AWAY NOW AND EAT SOME MASHED POTATOES OR DORITOS OR SOMETHING.

I MEAN IT, HEATHER.

So, I want to make a care package for Heather, not really for Binky, because Heather is the sick one. I’ll make Binky one once my niece or nephew makes his or her debut, but this time, I want to make something for Heather.

Any ideas, Internet?

First, I am sunning myself with an old, navel-grazing post of mine over here today:

Because why aim high, when you can aim low?

(that is not a trick question)

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Second, don’t forget to vote for your favorite entry in Aunt Becky Travel’s The World, Making Mischief.

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Be sure to submit your rockin’ questions to Go Ask Aunt Becky because, obviously.

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And lastly, the dorkiest post, well, ever.

Like any addict, I’m not really sure when it started, although I seem to remember it first after Amelia was born. Besides sticks of butter and cupcakes, one of the few things that would comfort me were cut flowers. Every week, as I dutifully churned out batch after ever-loving batch of white cupcakes, I’d go to the store and buy myself flowers.

A vase of fresh flowers cheered me up in a way that only Vicodin normally could.

At some point, my cheap-ass nature won out and I realized that for the same $20 a week, I could buy a real! live! plant! that I could keep for longer than 5 days. Midwestern winters are notoriously brutal, and seeing even the slightest sign of plant life is welcome.

(my front yard is so over-landscaped that I genuinely cannot find anywhere to stick tulip bulbs)

In that manner, my first orchid was bought.

Because he is a good, kind man, The Daver didn’t point out, as he sat among the cats, dogs, bunny and kids, that I needed something else to take care of like I needed a hole in my head.

Nor does he gently mock me like he could when he comes home from work to find another couple of plants sitting in the sink or sunning themselves merrily on the printer. Although that may be a product of his inability to notice anything other than unopened cans of cheese-whiz or his Linux box.

He shares my love of plant life in the same way I share his love for gadgets, which is to say, not at all. Of all the things I could get into, especially with the streak of alcoholism that runs a mile wide running rampant in my genetic code, this is probably the most healthy.

Unlike the alcoholic gene, though, I do seem to have inherited some of my father’s *ahem* OCD tendencies. Because if one orchid is good, ten is better, right? RIGHT?!?

(shockingly, I am the same way about plants as I am about soap. Did you see that movie with Jack Nicholson, “As Good As It Gets?” When he opens his medicine cabinet and it’s stocked with like 25 of the same bars of soap I nodded appreciatively while everyone else laughed. Someone had to explain the joke which, I should add, I still don’t find funny.) (probably because it is NOT funny)

Slowly but surely, I’ve added to my collection, quickly outgrowing the small Southern facing window by my computer. I’ve begun researching the different diseases, had to treat a few, and started collecting different types. While I am afraid of vaginas, and orchids look remarkably like vaginas, I seem to be fascinated by studying them. The orchids, not the vaginas, you pervies. Freud would, no doubt, have a field day with that.

(Freud can also kiss my lily white butt)

As the orchids in various stages of life slowly creep outwards, spilling off the table and onto other surfaces, I’m starting to feel like I’m doomed to be a crazy cat hoarder, except without the cats. I guess when I die alone in my apartment, the orchids, unlike the cats, won’t eat my face. Thank God, I suppose, for small favors.

My youngest son seems to have inherited my love of flowers which makes me completely appreciate how a parent could push a colorblind kid to paint just like mom did, because man, does that feel cool to be like, “ALEX likes flowers TOO!” Hearing him shriek indignantly, “Come ON Mom, socks and shoes ON” when he hears me mention “greenhouse,” because he’s that jazzed to go see flowers gives me a huge sense of pride.

So at the greenhouse, after we examined the koi fish, which were deemed “cooool” I asked the greenhouse guy about some special moss that I was specifically looking for, and he claimed ignorance of such a thing. While he showed me what might have been reasonable substitutes for some, I declined his offer, preferring to drive my fat white butt (with cranky toddler in tow) across town.

He laughed, saying something like, “yeah, this probably wouldn’t work for someone who names their orchids,” like those-crazy-assholes. I sputtered out a “heh-heh” and ran away as quickly as possible before he realized that I was thisclose to naming my plants after my television ex-husbands.

On our anniversary, after scoring a prescription for both Topamax and Vicodin for my My Grains, I’d requested a quick stop to pick up a new orchid. (shut UP) But, not being totally in season, there were no orchids to be had (there were, however mini-roses! SCORE!). Really, buoyed by the ever-hopefulness–followed by the inevitable letdown–that a new prescription brings, I was okay with this.

But, The Daver, he suggested that take a trip to a nearby orchid greenhouse. That’s right, 4 acres of swinging orchid awesomeness.

(shut UP)

And as I roamed the aisles, sweaty and smelly, happily picking up new species to try my hand at growing destroy what is left of my window space, while contemplating how to make it to an event that I will affectionately call Orchid Stock*(certain to be filled with little old ladies), I realized that the greenhouse guy wasn’t that off base.

It’s time to find some new television husbands to divorce.

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*I am not kidding**

**Want to go with me?***

***No, seriously, please? I’m pretty sure I’d get launched from the car like a particularly chubby missile if I tried to trick my family into going with me.

There is nothing in the world like the unsolicited advice one receives the moment that the second line turns pink. While I am aware that I did not singularly invent pregnancy, nor am I carrying the Christ-child, I *have* been pregnant before, and have managed to raise a successful kindergartner (shit, we’re old), people still tend to forget and remind me about having a baby.

Specifically, why it sucks so much, which is the attitude I dislike most. Sure, you’re not apt to scare *me* about it, but what about the REAL newbies? They don’t need to hear about a 354 hour labor or 4th degree tears! Don’t scare ’em until they’ve experienced it firsthand! Alas, I digress.

As kindly as I can, I try to answer their well-meaning questions and gently extract myself from the situation before having to talk about 1) vaginal discharge or 2) breast discharge. Yes, complete strangers do ask about such personal matters. Should they get too personal for me (especially if I am in the presence the XY contingent of my family), I simply begin to ask if their husbands still want to have sex with them, and if so, what is their favorite position? Shuts ’em the hell up right quick.

Most recently, and if I remember the most common question that I get is regarding the baby’s sex. More specifically, when I explain that I do not know what I am having yet, they ask what I *want* to have. My answer is succinct enough, all right, but never seems to appease them entirely.

My answer is this: honestly? I don’t *care* what I have.

Not.one.bit.so.long.as.the.baby.is.healthy. And my reasons for finding out the sex? Simple. Not to BOND with the baby or some shit, but to be able to SHOP for the baby.

(I can hear the Pregnancy/Parenting Police among us collectively gasp in disgust. Don’t worry, your children are OBVIOUSLY better than mine. Feel better now?)

I have decided to put together a little list of the pros and cons of having either sex to prove to you that I am not secretly holding a candle for pink or blue.

Cuter clothes? Girls, hands down. Boy clothes are terrible, and take much work to scour racks looking for something worthwhile. To be fair, I do own a fuckton of boys clothes (and nothing else) which would be very economical, but even THEY don’t compare to the cuteness that is girl clothes.

Cuter toys? Boys. Really, I hated dolls when *I* was a kid, and I don’t want Disney Princess or Bratz shit in my house.

Diapering? Girls. I have gotten whizzed on my face many freaking times it’s not even funny. PLUS, cleaning liquid shit from the twig and giggle berries takes for freaking ever. Balls= crease laden.

Temperament? Boys. Girls are fucking dramatic and whiny, boys tend to solve their problems with fists rather than having to ‘talk about it.’ Sheesh, do I *look* like I can handle that shit? I don’t like to *talk about things,* I like to use my fists o’ fury.

Relationship later in life? TIE. Girls are assholes when they’re teenagers (just ask me. I know. I was one), but become your friends when they’re older. Boys are not assholes (to their mothers) as teens, but are lost to you once they get married.

Genitals? Girls, again. Why? Because I share the same parts. I can teach you to clean your labia. It’s a nice swipe. Cleaning The Penis is hard. As is teaching The Penis to stand up and pee without whizzing all over your freshly laundered towels while you shriek for your penis-laden husband to come and help, which he does not do and does not understand why a Penis is needed to help a Penis pee in the toilet. (sense a pattern here? I do.)

Dating? Boys, but by a hair. While I almost made it a tie, as with a Girl I will have to worry about my poor husband weeping silently while polishing his shotgun, I remembered one key fact. My son will not come home pregnant. Nor *should* he get too weepy and brooding when he is dumped.

Blah, blah, blah, beauty in either sex, squirt squirt.

I can’t wait to find out so I can get my shop-on!

A list of things that just Piss Me Off, in no particular order:

1. People who pull out from the side of the road directly in front of me when there are no cars behind me so that I have to SLOW DOWN. If you know me, you know that I hate most things that impede my ability to drive fast.

2. People who use blogs as a personal forum for complaining about their lives, and then get incensed that people read it and may have an opinion about it. If you don’t want the Internet to know that you hate anal sex, have trichomoniasis, or like to beat off goats, DON’T PUT IT ON THE INTERNET. Plain and simple.

3. The terminology associated with being a wine connoisseur. I have no problem whatsoever with people liking particular or good wine, but listening to them talk about things like “smooth rounded tannic finish” makes me want to give myself a root canal with my fingernails. Maybe I’m embittered because I’ve been to a number of wine classes and never been able to understand or care what is said. Come to think of it, the only reason I went was to get drunk at 9am on a Saturday. No wonder I didn’t listen.

4. Cheerful people who tell me dumb things like, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Seriously, I’ll take those motherfucking lemons and make me an ass-whuppin’.

5. People who have to bring up politics in standard, garden- variety, small talk. The proper forum is key, here. Don’t take the statement “Nice day today” to bring up things like global warming or the oil crisis. If I had wanted to discuss that, I’d have said so.

6. Belly shirts. I hate this poor excuse for fashion trend, as it is never, Ever, EVER utilized by people who should be wearing them. Trust me, sweetcheeks, no one wants to see your (or mine) spare tire. It’s unsightly and nauseating.

7. People who take themselves That Seriously. Anyone I’ve ever met who has taken themselves So Seriously has never really known what Serious is. Take a step back, knock of the pretentiousness and get yourself together, people, it isn’t that hard!

8. I forget what eight was for.

9. Kevin Federwhatshisname. We all hate Britney’s man, but seriously I think he may be the most useless piece of wasted space ever to have graced the limelight. Have you HEARD his new song? Terrible doesn’t BEGIN to describe the bleeding that my ears did when I first heard it. GOD, he makes me ITCH!

10. The “Healthy” Menu at McDonald’s. I had the foresight to check out what would be BEST if I ate at the bestest restaurant in the world, and I was AMAZED at how awful their healthy shit is for you. You’re better off with a cheeseburger.

11. People who feel totally sorry for themselves for all of the Awful, Terrible, Horrible things that have happened in their lives and use that as a Victim Card to excuse their bad behavior.

12. Jello. Because really? There’s so often no room for it.