Yesterday, I was standing at the sink, using my new reverse osmosis water system, giving my orchids a drink and silently going over the vertebrae subtypes (“Certain Doctors Love Saddling Coeds”), trying desperately to get the Facts of Life theme song out of my head, when he laid it on me.

“Mom,” my eldest asked. “What’s a ‘sexual favors?'”

Had I been drinking anything, it would have ended up on the window in front of me.

After I stopped choking on my tongue, I carefully said, “What do you mean?”

“In a Mario video, they said, ‘Why does everyone try to rescue the Princess?’ and then Bowser says, ‘Sexual favors, of course.'”

I silently thanked autism for giving him the inability to read my face, because if he had, it would have said, “OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT.”

“Well,” I said, the cranial nerves long-forgotten, “it means like, kissing and stuffs.”

“EWWWWWWWWWW!” he yelled. “GROSS.”

He scampered off to play with his siblings and I returned to watering my orchids. I stood for a minute, watching him before I sang under my breath, “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have, the Facts of Life, the Facts of Life.“

In the eleventy-billion years I’ve been blogging, I don’t think I’ve ever taken a couple of days off. See, I’m too compulsive to do that. By noon, if I haven’t gotten something completely mediocre pecked out and posted here, I’m practically banging my head into the wall, yelling, “NOT WITHOUT MY BLOG.”

I took Monday and Tuesday off, not because I was frolicking around, doing awesome things with my Cabana Boy, Raphael, but because *flings hand against head dramatically* I was very close to death.

Well, no, I was probably not near death, but I wanted to be.

See, Pranksters, I had *cue Imperial Death March* The Stomach Flu.

I hate the stomach flu more than I hate cream-based condiments, smoove jazz and decaffeinated coffee (what’s the fucking point?).

I was the last one standing against it, too. Everyone else in my house had been felled by it and I was all LOOKIT ME, ALL EYE OF THE MOTHERFUCKING TIGER ON YOU, GASTROENTERITIS. IMMA MAKE YOU MY BITCH.

Three hours later, I was laying on the hideous tile in our upstairs bathroom, praying to the porcelain gods that they would spare me this agony and just let me die.

My cats, very helpfully, I should add in my most sarcastic tone, circled around me, trying to lick me back to health. Or, perhaps, decide where would be best to start gnawing on my corpse. I love my cats, but I don’t trust them not to chomp their way into my dead body to make a nice cozy home.

Monday morning found me in the ER for a couple of bags of fluids. I had dehydrated myself so thoroughly over the previous twelve hours that I couldn’t even produce tears. I hate going to the ER, but I was all, “I’M *wheeze* ALL *horks* EYE OF THE *splat* TIGER,” and then I passed out.

(I’m always pissed about going to the ER for things because, hell, I could give MYSELF a bag of Normal Saline or Ringers Lactate if I had the proper equipment.)

The following thirty-six hours were spent in a feverish haze, where I alternated between moaning on the couch and moaning in bed. The highlight? Drinking the most delicious blue-flavored slurpee in the world. Nothing, Pranksters, has ever tasted so good.

I also fulfilling one of my OCD dreams: I bought a carpet steamer. The excitement I feel over this is pathetic. I mean, who knows how to party, Pranksters? (answer: I do)

So this is Your Aunt Becky, telling you that I’m back. In black.

What did I miss while I was gone?

I blog under my real name. For as long as I’ve written on Mommy Wants Vodka, I’ve used my real name: Aunt Motherfucking Becky. I WAS plain-old “Becky” until The Real Becky came and smashed my dreams to smithereens. Apparently, there is no room on The Internet for two people named Becky.

Anyway.

There’s a lot of babble about keeping anonymous on The Internet and I completely understand why someone would make that choice. This is not a slam against those who choose to use pseudonyms.

I use my real name: Becky Sherrick Harks, which rules, and not just because I happen to be a narcissistic ass-clown who likes the sound of her own name.

This is why:

0) You never worry about anyone finding out that you have a Super Sekret Blog. Because the moment you’re all, “WOAH THIS IS SO-AND-SO’S SEKRET BLOG,” people find it more alluring and therefore titillating to stalk it. Pop my name into a search engine and BAM! you’ve got me out in the open. Not so exciting for my ex-boyfriends to find if I’m just THERE.

1) It keeps you from talking shit. Sure, a good old fashioned rant feels fucking great, but it feels a hell of a lot less great when someone’s feelers get all hurty. The best way to keep your posts anonymous is to post them via a third-party website, like Band Back Together (for non-rants) and Mushroom Printing (for snarky rants).

1) It ensures you will NEVER have to work again. We ALL know how lazy I am, right? That’s a given. Going to work every day is bullshit. Thanks to using my real name, I’ll never have to work again! What employer wants to Google a prospective employee only to find out that she talks about her vagina on the Internet?

2) You get a whole new identity if you ever decide to be un-Googleable. It’s like entering the Witness Protection Program! I’d have to legally change my name and adopt a new identity, which means I could finally be “Princess Grace of Monaco.”

3) You never have to use those annoying cutesy code words for family members, which makes it easier for people like me, who have tiny brains, to understand your posts without requiring a key.

5) You never worry about slipping up and destroying your persona. Because your persona is YOU, baby. Warts and all.

8 ) People relate better to other people, not personas. Even if it means they’re stalking you on Myspace.

13) You waste a hell of a lot less time blurring out the faces of everyone in pictures like they do on COPS. Not, *ahem* that I watch that show.*

21) You can add your Twitter Feed into your LinkedIN profile, ensuring that alongside the professional updates like, “I recently acquired a multi-billion dollar company,” yours can say, “YOU SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH AND MAKE ME A PIE, WOMAN!”

34) You realize that when world’s DO collide (online and offline) no one gives much of a shit.

55) People now expect when they meet you that you’ll probably hump their leg while eating a hot dog. That gets any awkwardness out of the way beforehand.

89) You can put your real name on any name badges, as opposed to “Sex Kitten23.” That’s especially helpful if you’re somewhere you want to be taken seriously**, rather than at Stardollars.

144) You know that no one ACTUALLY wants to track you down and make a lamp out of your boobs, because they would have done so already.

233) You know that – anonymous or not – if someone wants to find you, they will.

*MUCH.

**Shut your whore mouth.

————-

Your turn, Pranksters. What do you think about the internet and anonymity? Do you blog under your name or do you use a pseudonym? Why does that word look weird? Why does it smell like oranges in my house? Why does powdered gravy suck so badly?

…well, no, no I hadn’t.

At least, not until I was in Paris.

I was fourteen years old, on tour overseas with my traveling youth orchestra and I’d taken an extended vacation to Paris after the other musicians had gone home. My cousin lived there, you see, and I’d gone to visit him.

(this is me with a non-flasher, my boyfriend, Alex)

(no, my son is not named after him)

(although he was a really nice guy)

Along with my First Experience With Nutella (one which has turned into a full-blown Love Affair), I saw the sights and sounds of the city, including the Mona Lisa and several men, fully naked. Everywhere I went, it seemed, grown men wanted to take off their pants and show me what appeared to be hairy sausages.

I was suitably underwhelmed. These canned Japanese Mushroom-thingies were supposed to make want to have The Sex? I was baffled. I didn’t want The Sex; I wanted a barf bag and a kicky pair of shoes. A busy street, in the subway, outside the Louvre, it seemed that even graveyards were fair game for The Flashing of Aunt Becky.

One rainy day, between meals of steak frites and Nutella crepes, we chose to visit the Père Lachaise Cemetery. My mother, always a bit morbid, wanted to see where a bunch of famous people were buried. I myself wanted assurance that Jim Morrison was, dead, and therefore unable to produce any more of his horrible poetry. Even there, standing between a mausoleum and a grave, a flasher showed me his penis.

To this day, I’ve never seen so many men willing to drop trou and pull out their wangs.

Or, I should say, I hadn’t seen so many men interested in flashing me until I produced two sons of my very own.

And if they grow up to flash their penises (penii?) on the street, well, unlike dressing my son in a tutu, I will have a problem with that.

————

Pranksters, I wanted to say thank you for getting my back yesterday (I should have called that post: Go Ask Aunt Becky: TRAIN-WRECK Edition) There’s very little that gets under my skin more than being improperly accused of something I haven’t – and wouldn’t – do.

I can compose books of sonnets, odes, and entire blogs filled with The Error of My Ways but I take offense, not at being called a shitty mother, but being called out for something I hadn’t done.

When I filmed the video, I expected the “U R gonna make UR son GAY” crowd to come knocking at my door. I had my Delete Finger Ready for their onslaughts.

But this, it was like being accused of “having naturally blond hair” or “being a good writer.” Something that is simply untrue.

So Pranksters, I thank you deeply for reaffirming something I already knew. I have the best, smartest, most full of the awesome community of Pranksters on the Internet.

(I consider you guys family, by the by)(I don’t actually care if that sounds creepy).

1: time the words “put your ding-dong away” came out of my mouth yesterday.

92,284: times I’ve reminded Alex that his penis is PRIVATE.

92,284: times Ben has laughed uproariously when I said this.

67: times I wondered how on Earth I was supposed to survive living in the Sausage Factory for the next 18 years.

98,273: times that my daughter has insisted that both she and I have penises too.

82: times The Twitter has asked me if I’m really a dude.

1: person who had to tell me she was unfollowing me on The Twitter because I called Blogspot “the Supercuts of blogging platforms.”

1: blogspot blog I myself own.

2: bunnies scampering in my backyard whom I have named “Thor The Impaler” and “Professor Mittens.”

Too Ashamed To Admit: hours I’ve spent playing Angry Birds.

3: the fewest number of pieces one can break a stick of dry spagetti into.

0: boomsticks I currently own.

Too Many To Count: boomsticks I WANT to own.

2: rose plants didn’t survive the winter.

3: days I moped about the loss of my roses.

4: camera apps I have on my iPhone.

0: camera apps used in the picture

0: pictures (I’ve taken) that are better than this.

1: reminder I’m giving that we HAPPILY accept submissions on both Band Back Together and Mushroom Printing.

I got invited to some PR event this weekend in LA.

PR companies seem to have my address wrong – I get invited to stuff in NYC and LA, under the assumption that I actually live in either of those places and not stuck smack-dab in Chicago, the middle of the country. Perhaps PR companies assume that no one would ever consider living outside of the coasts, and to those PR companies, I would like to offer myself as evidence that people do, in fact, live in the Midwest.

Either way, I’m getting the itch to take a trip (yes, I’m still planning on the Epic Road Trip) and for upwards of an entire minute considered going to this event, just to get the hell out of here.

I can lock the kids in the basement with a litterbox and a fresh bowl of bowl of food and water, right? What do you mean, “kids don’t watch themselves?” That’s bullshit!

I have serious reservations about tripping it out to LA. LA is a great city, of course, if you’re a model or an actress, which is where I lose out. I’m neither. I’m a writer.

When I first posted a picture of myself on my blog, I had people say, “Wow, you’re prettier than I’d have expected.” Which is one of those weird underhanded compliments I never know how to respond to. Do I write ugly? Do you think I’d be ugly because I’m a writer?

I don’t know.

But I do know that LA is land of the beautiful and Illinois is the land of crooked government officials.

So I always feel a wee bit insecure whenever I travel there. Maybe I’m pretty for a blogger, but I’m not shampoo-model pretty and I am okay with that.

The last time I was in LA was a year and a half ago, in the middle of a cold-ass January. I happened to be freshly out of makeup when I arrived, so I made a bee-line for the MAC store, where I required the assistance of a man who probably modeled for Prada when he was not matching skin tones at the MAC store.

When I told him that I needed some powder and that stuff you put under your eyes to remove black circles, he took one look at me and tisked before flouncing into the backroom.

Minutes pass.

Finally, he emerges, breathless, and tells me that he had to go hunting for this particular shade. I looked quizzically at him as he applied it.

“Well, you’re just so…pale!” he sputtered out, then immediately reddened underneath his own makeup.

“We Midwesterners prefer the term, “sluggish,” to “pale,” I replied.

He laughed.

“Besides, how would YOU look if you didn’t see the sun for nine months of the year?”

He laughed harder.

Then he invited me over for dinner at his partner’s house.

I didn’t accept, of course, because I’m from Chicago and I know that “being invited over to dinner” means you’re going to be dismembered and stored in an upright freezer.

Probably.

Anyone who has dealt with chronic pain knows that eventually, you hit a wall. By the time I was seated in my neurologist’s office, silently diagnosing him with GERD, I was in such sorry shape that if he’d said, “what you need to do is grind a ballpoint pen into your eardrum until you hit your brain,” I’d have fought him for his own pen and done it right then and there. Anything to get rid of that pain.

I’d already been on a dose of something I called The Max, or occasionally Dope-a-Max and it had lost it’s efficacy. As we decided to increase the dose, my neurologist warned me that the higher the dose, the more likely it would be that I’d suffer “cognitive impairment,” which, I don’t need to tell you Pranksters, was the last thing I could have used.

Alas, I went up in dose, accepting that I would probably turn into the Aunt Becky equivalent of a gigantic vegetable, hoping that I’d at least be a kicky exotic vegetable like Chinese Broccoli (with stylish hair) or something.

I bought a notebook to jot down the things I’d previously relied upon my memory for. I accepted that I could no longer just “send an email” without having to look up the address to ensure I wasn’t sending it to the wrong person. I lived in a fog, existing one moment to the next rather than planning for even a couple of days into the future.

I was miserable. Probably more than I’d let on.

The headaches were manageable for awhile, but the gaps in my brain’s functioning made me frustrated and sad. I missed being able to say, “oh yeah, April 18, that’s the day I’m going to Take Over The World, Like Skynet, With Better Hair.” I missed being able to tweet at someone without having to copy/paste their Twitter handle.

Once The Max stopped working to keep my headaches at bay, I switched to something else, hoping to regain some of my cognitive function, as well as manage my headaches. I’d done over two years with The Max, and I was tired of it.

I’d been told that the side effects of Dope-A-Max were reversible so I expected to slowly regain my ability to manage the tasks that used to leave me frustratedly crying at the computer.

And who knows. Maybe they will.

But right now, I feel the gaps in my mind are so large that you could drive a semi-truck loaded with watermelons through them.

Mmmmm…watermelons….mmmm.

What were we talking about again?

Purchased at the pharmacy on Saturday night:

• 1 box vinyl gloves (in a kicky purple!)

• 1 bottle Maalox regular

• 1 bottle Maalox extra-strength

• 1 bottle body lotion

• 1 bottle Imodium

• 1 bottle Pedialyte

• Tin of Bag Balm

• 1 box Chewable Pepto-Bismol

• Air Freshener Spray

The teenage cashier looked mortified as she rang up my purchases until I said, “oh we’re just having a party tonight. Celebrate the whole Jesus-Thing.”

Then she looked very, very frightened.

————

How was YOUR Easter, Pranksters?

I came to the End of The Internet on Friday. I was searching for a laptop bag, right? And it turns out that laptop bags are the fugliest thing on the planet. Well, at least, the ones I could find.

Hence, the End of The Internet.

But I get all kinds of pissed off when I can’t find something that should be so simple, so I spent most of the day flopping around indignantly, occasionally shaking my fists at The Internet Gods, who had, for the first time, failed me.

After my daughter came home from preschool, she climbed up onto my indignant lap and demanded to look at what I’d been looking at. Which happened to be the kate spade website.

She and I spent a good while perusing ridiculously expensive purses, which, apparently, she, like her mother, is enamored by.

Eventually, she slithered off my frustrated lap and stood on her head on the floor next to me. Seeing a perfect opportunity to teach her some gymnastics, I rolled her over, helping her perform her first somersault. Delighted, she stood up, clapped her hands, yelled, “YAY!” and then begged me to do it again. So I did. We probably did twenty somersaults together before it was time for bed.

And it was walking up the stairs that I noticed something. The scar on the back of her head was bright purple.

Now, she has a skull implant there, covered by a thin layer of imperfect scalp skin (thank YOU, neural tube defects), upon which no hair will ever grow. The scar is fairly visible, although it often looks like her part is just extra-long.

She’s also got a couple of birthmarks on her face, common for kids with midline skull abnormalities, all of which turn from mildly discolored to extremely red whenever she becomes Furious George (which, since she’s my kid, is fairly often).

But I’d never seen her skull turn that purplish shade before. Immediately, I thought of what a dumbass move it was to do somersaults with a kid who has a fucking skull implant.

I dragged her into the bathroom, where the light was a bit better, and took a closer look. It could be something…and it could be nothing. Either way, I was right back in that birthing room, delivering a sick baby again. Only this time, it really WAS my fault.

I called the doctor on call, snotting and crying all over the phone, as I kept her up well-past her bedtime, to assess her level of consciousness. When I realized that she seemed to be just fine, the purplishness had subsided, I decided to put her to bed.

Then I checked on her every forty-five minutes for the rest of the night.

The next morning, the on-call doctor finally called back. Apparently, the answering service sucks a fat one. “Keep an eye out,” she said, “for any other signs of head injury. Vomiting, loss of consciousness, swelling, bruising, irritability.”

Okay, this I could do.

The following evening, I put her in bed, where she promptly barfed everywhere.

Shit, I thought briefly, until I remembered that my own guts had been through hell that week. Okay, I told myself, it’s a flu-bug. She’ll probably be up half the night barfing her guts out.

But she wasn’t.

She got up late the following morning and ate a quick breakfast with her brother.

Then, on the way to the Computer Store, she yacked again. A full 14 hours after her initial vomiting episode. Which, to me, was a Very Bad Sign.

Off to the ER we went. After several very long hours, it seemed that was simply some very bad timing. A flu-bug was the most likely culprit for her illness.

She’s been grounded until her sixteenth birthday.

That is, after I buy her a pony and a Porsche.

————

I have a new column up every Thursday at CafeMom. It’s called (barely) Surviving Parenthood. It’s full of the awesome.

———–

Speaking of Full of the Awesome, I was thinking about using THAT for a shirt design. Is that lame?

Also: TODAY is Tax Day, not April 15, which, hi, why didn’t someone tell me it was changing? That’s bullshit.

Anyway, the winner of my shirt giveaway:

(P.S: if you’re interested, they’re giving away a couple of my shirts on Band Back Together, too.)