I’ve wanted one of those disco shower heads ever since SkyMall happily informed me that they exist.

Think about it. No longer would you have to take ORDINARY showers! You’d be able to rock out with your cock out (alternately: jam out with your clam out) as you got clean. If I owned one of those puppies, I’d make EVERYONE who came over take a shower. TOGETHER!

Okay, so maybe not together. Also: I should totally write ads.

Anyway, I was perusing the Think Geek website, looking for the perfect gift for someone now missing a vestigial organ. (one could argue that I could have been talking about my tooth, but as my tooth was not a proper organ, that is neither here nor there).

There it was. In all it’s shimmering glory. Red and blue LED Showerhead. On fucking sale.

BOOM, Motherfuckers!

Of course I bought it.

It arrived yesterday. I spent the afternoon fantasizing about the disco shower I was gonna take. I got my new iPod dock loaded with Britney Spears and prepared to get up with the get down (or is it get down, get down?).

That was, of course, until The Daver evilly thwarted my plans.

As we ate our dinner, he dropped the bomb on me:

Aunt Becky: “OMG. I’m SO gonna take a disco shower. I should invite The Twitter over for a disco shower with me!”

The Daver: (looks at the packaging)

Aunt Becky: “Did I tell you I’m planning Amelia’s birthday party? Maybe we can have it in the shower!”

The Daver: (keeps looking at the packaging)

Aunt Becky: “This is seriously the best day ever. I’m gonna invite my parents over to look at my shower!”

The Daver: “This showerhead doesn’t have a massage setting.”

Aunt Becky: “So? Neither does our current one.”

The Daver: “Yes, it does.”

Aunt Becky: “I’ve lived here for five years and you never bothered to mention that?”

The Daver: “I thought you knew.”

Aunt Becky: “…”

The Daver: “Apparently, you didn’t know.”

The Guy On My Couch Ben: “I knew that.”

The Daver: “See?”

Aunt Becky: “I take it I’m not getting my disco showerhead.”

The Daver: “….”

The Guy On My Couch Ben: “….”

Aunt Becky: “You guys all suck.”

Last night found me sitting in the middle of a bustling Chinese restaurant, several of the employees dressed as elves. I looked around (it had been several years since I, myself, had been there) and realized that while it had once been decorated in standard American Chinese restaurant – think beige tones, ancient maps of China on the wall, fake flowers adorning every table – it had now been turned into Hawaii. Chinese-style.

That’s right, I sat, in the middle of a Hawaiian Chinese restaurant, served by a Chinese elf, while The Grinch played on the lone television, subtitled. A gaggle of college kids on my left tried to order a Hot Toddy while the table behind me gripped about the buffet being refilled too infrequently.

I was (initially) sober – I checked. And it was real.

I did the only logical thing one should do in such a situation – I began to order girly drinks with bizarre names like “Pina Colada” and “Scorpion” – which, the menu said, to “be wary of sting.” (I’m generally a bourbon girl, if anything, so girly drinks all sound oddly-named to me)

It had been a tough Christmas for me.

The addition of another (adult) person to care for right around the time I normally am all, “holy FUCK I forgot to do xxx” made for long days. Things around my house have been strained, as most of you have guessed. I’m never prepared enough to have my presents bought OR wrapped more than three days pre-Christmas, no matter how much I vow to be That Person. It’s always a mad dash in the days leading up to Christmas, and between the mouth surgery (me) and the vestigial organ removal (The Daver).

And I love the holidays. So having them be anything other than full of the awesome makes me sad in the pants.

Somehow, though, that awesomely tacky Chinese restaurant redeemed the holiday for me. Sure, I got drunk on girl drinks and am pretty sure my head is going to a) explode all over the fucking place or 2) explode, but not all over the place. Yeah, my food sorta tasted like an approximation of Mongolian Beef rather than the actual item I’d ordered. And okay, if I’m being honest, my Mai Tai tasted almost identical to lighter fluid.

But it didn’t matter.

Sitting there, in what I’m pretty sure was a David Lynch movie set, I was reminded of the absurdity of life. How there is joy in the smallest, most ridiculously decorated spaces. How even when things are so, so hard, we have hope.

And I do.

I hope.

In an effort to outdo my tooth surgery, The Daver’s appendix decided that it was tired of living inside his body, on a constant stream of Doritos and Funyuns.

It rebelled.

So I’m sitting in the hospital, mullet-watching and hoping to score some morphine.

I brought my nursing badges and am planning to go scrub in and assist in some surgical cases.

You guys’ll bail me out, right?

I should’ve known. I really should’ve known.

Sitting in the waiting room at the RotoRooter guy’s office, what happens to come onto the speakers but the Eagles. The fucking EAGLES, man. Not as bad as Rush, but still, up there on my Run Like Hell list.

Finally, after what appeared to be twenty-six hours (not the two minutes it took), I was called back into see my (new) dentist. First question, “Do you use nitrous?” I figured, if I’ve gotta be in agony, I may as well be wasted, too.

“No,” the nurse replied, “just local.”

So she strapped another one of those, “IMMA CHOKE YOU TO DEATH, ASSHOLE” X-ray things in my mouth, as I vowed to brush my teeth regularly. 8 times a day, even! 12! Anything so I didn’t have to have bite-wings in my mouth again.

The dentist with kind eyes came in and took a look almost instantaneously. I hadn’t even strapped on my iPod yet, and there he was, all bright-eyed and smiles.

(boring aside: I always, ALWAYS, listen to you, Pranksters. Y’all told me to listen to some tunes and I fucking DID. Er, was going to. I also held a tube of chapstick like it was my talisman)(if I knew what a talisman was)

He poked around in my mouth a bit, jostling my shredded tongue, before he sucked in his breath.

Uh. Oh.

Not a good sign.

Then, he went over and took a look at my x-ray. He sighed more deeply.

Fuck. How can I make two jovial dentists sigh in one fucking week? I should win an award for Worst Tooth Ever.

He then swiveled his chair over to me and said, the regret seeping out of his pores. “Well, we can do two things. I can TRY to give you a root canal, probably a couple procedures, then your dentist can work to lengthen the root and in a couple of years you may be back here.” That was clearly not the preferred method.

“OR, we can just extract the tooth. There seems to be some decay at the roots and I’m concerned by it.”

Well hell. I ruined his day AND made him concerned. Is there anything worse than hearing, “I’m concerned about you?” I think not.

It took me less than a second to come to my conclusion: “Let’s get that fucker outta there.”

“Okay,” he said mournfully. “We don’t do that here.”

Tears pouring, I began the process of calling every tooth-yanker in the area, begging them to get me in. Found one who’d do it, but only if I got there NAO. Which was no problem since I was approximately five feet away from their office.

They, at the very least, had The Nitrous. And no Eagles playing in the waiting room.

I went back, begging the nurse to hold my hand, after she told me my headphones were too large to use during the procedure. She cranked up the Christmas music instead, and I began Aunt Becky’s Nitrous Trip. I realized that while under the influence, it was the most relaxed I’d been in years. Stress? What ME Stressed? HOW DARE YOU SIR.

The ceiling began to swim and I swore that the Christmas music began to skip, like the worst industrial remix of Deck the Halls, ever. But I didn’t care. I was RELAXED, motherfucker.

The tooth extraction went well, overall, except that I’m now missing one of my back molars. Perhaps Santa will bring me a new one, rather than the stocking full of, um, nothing I’ll probably get this year. (Long, LONG story).

I went home, where The Guy On My Couch, Ben, promptly made me some chocolate frosting that I couldn’t eat, while my kids clucked and fussed over me. (Daver was off at a play in the city all night).

Today, I look like an overgrown Cabbage Patch Kid, half of my face swollen and bruised. The pain is better, for sure, but I was just informed that I am still unable to chew things for the next few days. Which is probably good for my waistline.

And I’m overwhelmed by the amount of slack-jawed yokel jokes I’ll be able to make at my own expense for the next 50 or so years.

Or I will be, once I stop bleeding.

I bopped my way to the dentist yesterday, looking happily forward to having a tongue that wasn’t shredded to ribbons every time I moved, spoke, drank or breathed. Sure, I didn’t like the idea of a needle the size of a McDonald’s straw being unceremoniously shoved into my delicate gumline, but shit, my tongue!

*wrings hands*

WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF MY TONGUE?

/end hand-wringing

I waited and waited until 2PM, my appointment time, which seemed inexhaustibly far from whatever moment I was currently in.

Finally, the moment came when it was time to leave. I nearly lept into the the dentist’s chair, barely pausing to give my very talkative dentist a cursory “Yo, Dawg.” First thing he said, after we got through our discussion about how delicious almonds were and how they are, “Of The Devil,” was this, as he gazed upon the damage to my tooth: “Oh.”

Normally, I’d be okay with this level of noise, but for someone who spent ten minutes describing almonds and how GOOD they are for you, this was a downright frightening sound.

“Well,” he said, “let’s take some pictures of this tooth and I’ll optimistically get a filling kit ready.”

Not the most encouraging sounds one can hear. OH WELL, I thought as I bounded off to be gagged by one of those X-Ray things I’m halfway convinced is a torture device to teach kids to floss, I bet I’ll be LUCKY.

Famous. Last. Fucking. Words.

No sooner had my ass grazed the dental chair, did the hygienist hand my dentist the pictures of mah tooth. He sighed. Deeply.

Maybe, I thought, he’s sighing at the BEAUTY of my tooth. I bet it has a really awesome nerve or something. He’s geeky like that. I bet that’s it!

When he finally grabbed a piece of paper to draw a picture for me, I saw his face. It had fallen. He had a case of The Sads. He drew a picture kind of like this:

Normal Tooth:

Aunt Becky’s Tooth:

After he showed me that, he’s like, “Are you SURE you’re not in any pain?” That’s how you know shit is FUCKED the fuck UP.

Sadly, he wrote me a referral to someone who treats these things. I’m getting a “root canal,” on Thursday which, as far as I can ascertain, is sorta like a rotorooter for your tooth. Or something. I’m sorta “la-la-la” *covers ears* about the whole thing.

I’m hoping that, at the very least, I can get a new tooth that’s made of gold and covered in diamonds.

Then, I’m on my way to starting my grill.

I’m pretty sure there’s a piano hovered neatly above my doorstep, ready to crash on my head the moment I walk outside. I’m totally using the back door, FYI. And no, you Uncle Pervies, not THAT back door.

I’d accepted the poisoned cake. I’d accepted glass-filled eyes.

But the tooth? That just seems excessive.

Yeah, that’s right. I broke a tooth yesterday. ANOTHER tooth. That would be the second tooth in six months.

And you’re probably thinking, “That Wiley Aunt Becky, she looooooves gnawing on boulders,” and you would be wrong. I prefer pebbles, if I’m going to gargle rocks at all (I have a small mouth).

See, I was all, “LOOKIT THIS DELICIOUS ALMOND! I AM GOING TO EAT THIS DELICIOUS ALMOND!” so I did. Then, I was all, “THAT FUCKING ALMOND DONE LODGED IN MAH TOOTH SOMEFIN’ WEIRD.” Apparently, I was also playing the part of Cletus, The Slack-Jawed Yokel.

So I stuck mah old finger on into my mouth to inelegantly dislodge that particular bit of feisty almond, when I all but sheered my finger off. Either that was some fucked-up almond, exacting revenge upon me for gnawing on it, or my tooth had broken. (the third, less popular option was that I’d eaten a razor blade, but that was quickly discarded as a possibility. I am dumb but I am not THAT dumb).

I waddled to the bathroom to attend to my bloody stump of a finger and to look in a mirror.

Sure enough, as I bled every-fucking-where, I saw it. A chunk of my waaaaaay back molar was gone. Presumably down my digestive tract, probably wrecking havoc and possibly killing me dead before the day is out (I don’t have high hopes of seeing tomorrow).

Well, fuck.

My tongue is shredded to ribbons from having the audacity to move, and I’m trying to fashion a tongue-bra to tide me over until 3:00, when my dentist can finally see me.

And fix the second tooth I’ve broken this year.

I expect a lecture on stress and how I should find some relaxing things to do, like take a bath! Eat some yogurt! Run five miles! But I won’t be listening to him. I’ll be too busy working on my i(don’t bother using it as a)Phone.

Hope he’ll get out of the way so I can see my screen. Otherwise a lot of people are going to be getting really bizarro emails.

If I don’t see you again, Pranksters, know that I love you. Each and every one of you.

(*waves* Hi Lurkers!)

And if I am back tomorrow, expect that I’ll be missing an arm, a leg, or possibly a face. You should probably start a betting pool.

Just, you know, sayin.

My neighbor growing up was my best friend. We’d play American Gladiators together after we watched women’s wrestling for hours. She also had everything I ever wanted.

Like a Nintendo.

My parents were, as I’ve previously mentioned ad nauseum, teak and fine china people. They were the original wooden toys people (after, of course, the pioneers and the Amish) and would’ve been pretty happy if I played that weird hoop game or made things out of piles of sticks. I’m pretty sure they, at one point, bought me a wooden doll. Yeah, you read that right: I owned a wooden doll. Is it any wonder that I’m as maternal as a sack of rocks?

(answer: no)

When I begged them, year after ever-loving year, for a Nintendo, they scoffed at me: Video games? I should be reading a book by candlelight or sewing my own clothes or churning butter. Not rotting my mind on video games!

It bears mentioning that my older brother spent his days and nights playing Zork on the computer.

So Nintendo? I had no stinkin’ Nintendo.

Which meant I spent an inordinate amount of time at my best friend’s house, begging her to let me play one level – just one level. She, delighted at the sudden shift in power, would tell me, hail noes until I got up to leave, and when I did, she’d suddenly develop an interest in playing.

Eventually, my parents bought me a Sega Genesis, so while my friends were teaching Mario to fly with those stupid fucking raccoon wings, I was playing Echo the (Asshole) Dolphin. There went any interest I had in becoming a dolphin lover.

Today, I don’t like games. Can I blame my parents for that? Probably not. But while Daver and Ben sit on the couch at night playing games on their (not so) Smart Phones, I sit and actually watch television. My parents probably DID have a good hand in making sure my attention span was greater than that of a gnat. Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad!

But my children, God love them, they love their games. Video games, to be specific. And I’ll begrudgingly admit that video games have come a long way in the past (mumbles) years.

What kills me, though, is this: with all of the awesome games out there these days, my kids still want to play fucking Mario games. Or Sonic games. The shit that was around (mumbles) years ago when I was a wee crotch parasite.

Not only that, the kids love to WATCH those old television shows. The ones my parents forbid me to watch because, like video games, television rots your brain. I was allowed to watch an hour of public television. A day.

But my kids? They’re in love with some creepers “Super Mario Super Show” from the 80’s. And the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon. Stuff I never saw. And thank GOD for that, because holy creepers, Batman.

You’d think that with all of the newer television shows with LESS creepy characters, they’d opt to watch them. But no. They’re watching stuff that both Daver and (older) Ben watched. I’d have probably watched them too, had I not lived with hippies.

Now, I’m thinking that the kids need some wooden dolls or that hoop game or some sticks for Christmas.

Seems only fair.

Now as much as I USE technology, I’m also fairly inept.

(stop laughing)

My computer, Big Mac, he* gets updated once every blue moon, when some piece of software I use to check my email has become defunct. Other than that, I use this picture as my screen saver, which is probably depleting the life of my computer every second it’s on there:

But I don’t care. See how MAJESTIC it is?

*weeps*

*weeps*

*weeps*

Anyway, like the rest of the world, I’m on Google Plus. Which is touted as “The Better Facebook,” which I suppose it is, only until it develops it’s OWN Farmville and my friends start asking for spells to make their crops bigger. The next time that happens, I’m demanding that the person behind that request come the fuck OVER to my house and help me with MY garden. My FOR REAL garden.

(also: I love you, Pranksters, because every time I bitch about Farmville, 400 of you send me requests for crops or pink cows or whatever on The Facebook. It’s proof that I know the BEST people on the Internet.)

So I’m on The New Facebook and I use it occasionally to do things like say, “I’m so happy this isn’t The Old Facebook,” and “Isn’t this better than The Old Facebook?”

Other than that, I use it about as much as I use The Facebook. Which is to say, hardly ever.

But because I hate Skype more than I hate John C. Mayer, I heard about this newfangled thing you kids do called “Hangouts.” The New Facebook hangouts.

TELL me that doesn’t sound dorky.

Anyway, with the Band Back Together Board (for the non-profit, NOT like a Skateboard or an ACTUAL piece of wood), being in separate states, we use The New Facebook Hangouts for our board meetings. We USED to use Skype until we realized we needed to be able to conduct ACTUAL business rather than, “OMG YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’RE IN A DISCO.” Or “NICE FREEZE-FRAME FACE! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Seems unprofessional.

Anyway.

So we launched the new site this weekend, which meant that the 80 of us that work behind the scenes (SHOUT OUT TO MY HOMIES, THE BRAINS!) were all running around like Chicken Little. Or maybe that was just me. So on Sunday, we had a Google Hangout for about 10 of us.

I started the hangout because obviously, and slowly people popped in and out. It was pretty rad. I mean, MAH FRIENDS IN ONE SCREEN? What could be better?

(answer: pony on roller skates)

But I neglected to do one important thing. One VERY important thing. I didn’t make our hangout private.

So every 10 or so minutes, random old men would pop into our chat, causing us to frantically block them. It was an awesome game of WHO CAN BLOCK FASTER?

What made it WAY awesomer is that one of our Brains, Sarah, got stuck chatting with some guy from Egypt who told her she was “beautiful like the moon.” When I stop laughing, I’ll let you know.

My only regret is this: we didn’t see a single naked wang.

What is the world coming to when you don’t see a SINGLE NAKED PEEN while on The Internet?

*wrings hands*

WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE WANGS?

/end hand-wringing

*all of my technology is male. I have Frank, my iPad, John, my iPod, and Larry, my iPhone. That way I can say, “I’m hanging with FRANK tonight,” and it sounds illicit – also cooler than “I’m playing on my iPad.”

Designing a site is about as easy as teaching my washing machine to sing “Whoomp! There It Is!” Actually, now that I think about it, teaching my washing machine might be easier. Just ask my coffee maker, who’s been singing “It’s My Party” since last summer sometime.

The minute computers are turned into anything but email machines, I get flustered. Or, I should say, I start tonguing my Xanax bottle and hallucinating random animals singing an A Capella version of the ABC’s. That’s more like it.

And yet I get tasked (read: task myself) with this shit. It’s the REAL Bad News Bears.

For the past eleventy-five-niner months, I’ve been working on redesigning Band Back Together. It turns out that WordPress kinda balks at having more than 2,000 registered users, 2,000 posts and 300 pages.

(to answer your question: GO WITH WORDPRESS FOR A PERSONAL BLOG. Blogspot is the SuperCuts of the blogging world)

But we’ve been redesigning Band Back Together since I can remember. Which means I’ve been constantly bombarded questions like, “BUT WHAT ARE THE OBJECT PERMISSIONS? WHAT SHOULD WE DO?” Questions like that make me go all, “lalala, pumpkin pie is NOT delicious, lalala,” because I’m just not equipped to answer them.

The new site launched this weekend, which, I was all RAD, NO MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT PERMISSIONS, but then, I got MORE questions about permissions. And objects. And objects WITH permissions.

I spent the weekend fantasizing about photoshopping Avril Lavigne’s neck, severed, and spurting a veritable blood fountain. Don’t ask me what she did to evoke my ire, but I think it’s a song about skaters or complicated, or complicated skaters. Either way, it hurt my vagina to listen to.

But we did it.

And this week, I’m battening down the hatches and preparing for more objects and permissions and answering questions I know nothing about with “um…C?” because that’s what you do when you don’t know. You SOUND like you know the answer. It works out well. (lies)

So now, I am off to tongue my empty Xanax bottle and pray that no one asks me about permissions for at LEAST an hour. Or Avril Lavigne’s head is comin’ OFF.

Go see my purdy work on Band Back Together. Then? Tell Your Aunt Becky how YOUR weekend was.

After we’d taken the kids out – against my better judgement – for buffalo wings, I was ready for Mommy’s Time Where She Tongues A Bottle of Xanax.

So I took a bath.

No, Pranksters, I am not 91 years old. I just happen to like baths. Especially because I can hide in them without having errant crotch parasites popping in and out demanding things.

So there I was, happily scrub-a-dubbing my hairs, getting ready to hack the hairs off my legs, when it happened.

Sniff-sniff, went my nose.

Rub-rub, went my hand, figuring I’d somehow gotten shampoo UP my nostril. (it wouldn’t be the first time)

Bad move, Aunt Becky. Bad, BAD move.

The next thing I knew, a faucet had been switched on and my nose began to pour blood, all over me, my vagina and everything.

Fuck.

I’ve gotten bloody noses since I was a toddler (don’t do cocaine, kids!) so I know the types of bloody noses I get.

1) Mildly irritating, yet goes away in approximately three minutes

B) Should probably require a blood transfusion.

This was the latter of the two.

And I knew that I was stuck – rooted in place. If I dared make a move, I was going to spew blood all over the bathroom, my clean clothes, EVERYTHING. It would be a massacre.

So I sat there, trying to figure out what I could do. I had at my disposal 1 old washcloth and 1 plastic cup (from the kids washing their hairs).

First, I tried to staunch the flow with the washcloth. No way in HELL I wanted to sit in Shark Week water. Within 30 seconds, the cloth was soaked and I was freaking out.

Could I call someone? I was in the bathroom at the very back of the house and the likelihood of someone hearing me was about as great as the likelihood that I will, one day, win a Grammy for my mash-up of “Whoomp, There It Is” and “It’s My Party.” Besides, I knew that hollering would only increase the blood flowing freely from my nose.

I began thrashing around, upset at the unfairness of it all, perhaps pulling a WHY ME, GOD, WHY MEEEEEEE? as I splished and splashed, all histrionic-style. I gave up pretty quickly, because there was no one around to notice my plight.

I was already drenched in my own blood, trying to drain the bathwater as quickly as I could. Frantically, I looked around, spying the cup. Fuck, I thought. FUCK. That’s what I got to work with.

So I put the cup under my nose, tilted my head forward, and tried to breathe through my mouth. I could ride this out. I could do this. I was the brave fucking toaster without the toast or the er.

I don’t know how long I sat there, my blood pooling in the sad cup, but it had to have been awhile. Soon, my bathwater drained and there I sat, shivering, and wet, covered in blood, while my nose continued to do it’s best faucet impression.

Eventually, my nose decided that HEY! Clotting is REALLY cool! and I was able to rinse the blood off myself and exit the shower, a little light-headed, but fine.

I considered donating the blood to some wanna-be vampire (Breaking Cherries Dawn opened this weekend, right?), but decided that I didn’t know enough wanna-be vampires.

Which is sad, really. I could’ve gotten some pretty good cash for it.